01 March 2017
A Calendar Page for March 2017
We’re back with more of the weird and wonderful Additional MS 36684 calendar! To find out more on the manuscript in general, see January’s post, and for more on medieval calendars, check out our original calendar post from 2011.
Calendar page for March, from a Book of Hours, St Omer or Théouranne, c. 1320, Add MS 36684, ff. 2v–3r
March is traditionally considered to be the beginning of Spring, and accordingly our marginal decorations are springing about, and include drawings of a few butterflies.
Detail of a butterfly (far left margin) and other marginalia, Add MS 36684, f. 3v
The start of the calendar helpfully tells us that March has 31 days (Martius habet dies xxxi). While there aren’t as many feast days filled in for this month as the previous two, there is one very important one on folio 4v — the major feast of the Annuntiatio dominica, the Annunciation, marking the day the Virgin Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel and told she would bear a son. This takes place on 25 March — nine months, of course, before Christmas Day.
Detail of the labour of the month, Add MS 36684, f. 3v
March’s labour of the month is a woman holding two flaming candles inside a Gothic niche. The labour of the month for March usually features depictions of farmers planting seeds or trimming vegetation (see the Bedford Hours example from last year); in this case, perhaps the woman is doing a bit of Spring cleaning!
Detail of Aries, Add MS 36684, f. 4r
The zodiac sign for March, Aries, is depicted as a white ram inside his own niche opposite the labour of the month. He is flanked by two composite creatures with very long and sharp beaks.
As a reminder, you can see all of Additional MS 36684 online on Digitised Manuscripts. Happy Spring cleaning!
Taylor McCall
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28 February 2017
Pancake Tuesday
Today is Pancake Tuesday, when many cooks whip up pancakes in every size, shape and flavour! This popular tradition coincides with Shrove Tuesday, the last day before the start of Lent. Lent is the period of 40 days which comes before Easter, and during the Middle Ages this time was observed by fasting. As the day before Lent, Shrove Tuesday was marked by families indulging in foods forbidden over the fasting period, including meat, fats, eggs and milk. These were also foodstuffs that would not remain fresh over the 40-day fasting period, so it was necessary for households to use up these ingredients.
One common dish that combined fats, milk and eggs, with an addition of flour, was the pancake. Did you know that the British Library holds a 13th-century recipe for pancakes from an English collection of culinary recipes (now Additional MS 32085)?
Detail of a rabbit baking its own bread in a miniature oven, from Lansdowne MS 451, f. 6r
This recipe for white crepes or pancakes is composed in Anglo-Norman French, and it is similar to modern pancake recipes.
Nice day for a white pancake: recipe for ‘blanche escrepes’, from Add MS 32085, f. 117v
Here is a translation so you can judge for yourself:
2. White pancakes. Here is another dish, which is called white pancakes. Take best white flour and egg white and make batter, not too thick, and put in some wine; then take a bowl and make a hole in it; and then take butter, or oil, or grease; then put your four fingers in the batter to stir it; take the batter and put it in the bowl and pour it through the hole into the (hot) grease; make one pancake and then another, putting your finger in the opening of the bowl; then sprinkle the pancakes with sugar, and serve with the ‘oranges’.
(translation taken from Constance B. Hieatt & Robin F. Jones, 'Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections Edited from British Library Manuscripts Additional 32085 and Royal 12.C.xii', Speculum, vol. 61, issue 4 (Oct. 1986), 859-882)
Watch out, though, these ‘oranges’ actually refer to another recipe in the collection for pork meatballs made to resemble fruit. However you enjoy your pancakes, get them while they’re hot!
Bas-de-page scene of Salome dancing on her hands before the feasting of Herod and Herodias from the Taymouth Hours, Yates Thompson MS 13, f. 106v
Alison Ray
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25 February 2017
The Art and History of Calligraphy
On Thursday, 2 March (19.00–20.30), professional calligrapher Patricia Lovett will be giving a talk at the British Library, entitled 'The Art and History of Calligraphy'. Patricia will be drawing from the Library’s rich collections of manuscripts to tell us about the art and history of calligraphy from her own practitioner’s perspective. Not only will her talk be accessible for a lay audience, but it will also offer insights that should interest experienced book historians. Patricia is able to identify in manuscripts aspects of the historical processes of writing that may not be obvious to academic audiences, such as when the quill was refilled, when it needed to be cut, how it was cut, and the relationship of the lettering to illumination.
Detail of a miniature of Prudence writing at her desk, with pupils before her, from Laurent d’Orleans, La somme le roi, France (Paris), 2nd quarter of the 14th century, Royal MS 19 C II, f. 48v
In her talk, Patricia Lovett will be showing some of the most extraordinary examples of historical scripts found in British Library manuscripts. She will illustrate how, from Roman times until the present day, different writing styles and materials have changed the ways in which letters were formed, and how this resulted in a range of scripts that men and women used to express their ideas and beliefs. (Her talk features the earliest example of a British woman’s handwriting!) Patricia will explain how the scribe of the Lindisfarne Gospels, writing around the year 700 at the monastery of Lindisfarne, created his beautifully decorated Insular script; how the approximately 20 scribes of the Moutier-Grandval Bible, working in 9th-century Tours, executed the then recently-developed Caroline minuscule; how scribes in subsequent centuries developed the much more narrow and angular Gothic script in some of the most sumptuous late medieval manuscripts (such as the Luttrell Psalter and the Bedford Hours); and how changes in writing style in Renaissance Italy resulted in the so-called humanistic script.
The Evangelist Matthew writing his Gospel, England, c. 700, Cotton MS Nero D IV, the Lindisfarne Gospels, f. 25v (left). St Jerome writing the Vulgate, France, c. 1410 – 1430, Add MS 18850, the Bedford Hours, f. 24r (right).
You also get a chance to see Patricia at work: after her talk she will be signing copies of her new British Library book calligraphically!
Patricia Lovett, 'The Art and History of Calligraphy'
The British Library
Thursday, 2 March 2017, 19:00–20:30
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16 February 2017
The Seven Sages of Rome: Stories of the Wicked Ways of Women
The Seven Sages of Rome is a varied collection of moral stories or exempla that includes over 100 tales in one or more of the many versions that exist throughout Europe and the East, where they originated. The unifying theme is provided by the story of Florentin, son of the Emperor Diocletian, who is under threat of death.
The Seven Sages and the emperor’s son, with the rubric, Incipit liber septem philosophorum cuiusda[m] Imperatoris Romani, Italy, N. (Venice), 1440s, Add MS 15685, f. 83r
He has been accused by his young stepmother of seducing her and plotting against his father. For seven days the seven sages, tutors of the prince, try to obtain a stay of execution by telling the Emperor stories of the wickedness of women, while the stepmother counters these with stories of her own, pointing to Florentin’s guilt. Having remained mute all this time, the prince himself speaks on the eighth day to proclaim his innocence, and the Queen is judged guilty and executed.
Detail of the Emperor and Empress playing chess, from the Continuation des Sept Sages, France, Central (Paris); 2nd quarter of the 14th century, Harley MS 4903, f. 106v
The tales in the original collection have names like Arbor or ‘The Pine and its Sucker’, Canis or ‘The Greyhound and the Serpent’, and Puteus (the Well) or ‘The Husband Out of Doors’, in which an unfaithful wife, who has been locked out (or locked away, depending on the version) by her husband as punishment, pretends to drown herself in the village well, and when he goes to the village square to investigate, she locks him out in turn and he is then arrested for breaking the curfew.
Ward’s Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum lists 6 manuscripts in Volume II, Eastern Legends and Tales, as the roots of the cycle of tales is in the East: The Book of Sindibad, believed by some to originate in India, possibly as early as the 5th century BC. The earliest medieval western example in the British Library's collections, Harley MS 3860, is in French, and was copied in the north of England in the early 14th century. The manuscript comprises historical chronicles, Grosseteste’s Chateau d’amour and the Manuel des Pechies and has just been published in full on our Digitised Manuscripts site.
A tinted drawing of the Empress and a decorated initial 'L' ('emperur), Les Sept Sages de Rome, England, N. (?Durham), 1st quarter of the 14th century, Harley MS 3860, f. 31r
Also from the early 14th century is Additional MS 27429, translated into Italian from the French, based partly on the version in Harley 3860 and partly on an earlier French version. The relationships between the texts are complex.
A copy in Latin, Additional MS 15685, is from mid-15th-century Venice, with colourful miniatures:
The Empress attempting to seduce her stepson, Liber Septem Philosophorum or Book of the Seven Sages, Venice, 1440–1450, Add MS 15685, f. 84v
Out of a total of 9 surviving manuscripts in Middle English, 3 are in the British Library, each originally containing 15 tales, though one, Arundel MS 140, is now incomplete.
Cotton MS Galba E IX from the late-14th and Arundel MS 140 from the early-15th century are collections of moral and religious texts, both containing The Prik of Conscience as well as the Seven Sages. In the first, the pine tree becomes a ‘pineappel tre’.
Egerton MS 1995, a miscellany of prose and verse from the south of England, begins with the Seven Sages and includes the original version of John Page’s poem on the siege of Rouen.
The beginning of ‘The fyrste tale of the Emperasse’ from The Seven Sages of Rome, Egerton MS 1995, f. 10r
Continuation of the Sept Sages
There exist further tales in the cycle, known as the Continuation of the Sept Sages, not described by Ward, but related to the above. Harley MS 4903, also recently digitised, contains the second part of this text: the first part is in Paris, BnF ms francais 17000. The tales are broadly grouped around the character of Cassidorus, Emperor of Constantinople, and the ones in the Harley volume are Helcanus (the concluding part), Peliarmenus and Kanor. Helcanus is the son of Cassidorus and Peliarmenus is brother of the emperor, who tries to get rid of his nephew in order to rule by himself.
Dyalogus throwing Cassidorus’s children into the river; Dorus is rescued by a fisherman; an unidentified coat of arms in the margin, at the beginning of the Roman de Peliarmenus, France, Central (Paris), 2nd quarter of the 14th century, Harley MS 4903, f. 16r
The tale of Peliarmenus ends with the death of Cassidorus. The Roman de Kanor begins with a lion, an old friend of Cassidorus, taking his four sons, one of whom is Kanor, to a hermitage to be raised by a hermit named Dieudonne, and Nicole, a servant of their mother, the Empress for seven years then educated at the court of the King of Hungary. There are several sub-plots involving firstly Celydus, illegitimate son of Cassidorus who becomes King of Jerusalem, and secondly Nero, son of the Empress Nera, switched at birth with the child of a monk, and later switched with Libanor, son of the Queen of Carthage. One of them (it is hard to tell which) becomes Emperor of Constantinople and Kanor eventually becomes Emperor of Rome!
The empress’s baby and the monk’s baby being switched at birth, from the Roman de Kanor, France, Central (Paris); 2nd quarter of the 14th century, Harley MS 4903, f. 171r
This collection of disparate and convoluted tales is not always easy for a modern reader to interpret, but it contains representatives of the narratives and tropes that have characterised human storytelling from the very beginning and across all cultures: the wicked stepmother, children brought up by an animal, babies swapped at birth, hermits and emperors. Many of these would have been familiar to a medieval audience and still are today.
Chantry Westwell
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14 February 2017
Love Me Do: Medieval Love Spells
Valentine’s Day is all about love — mutual love and shared love. But what if love is unrequited or one-sided? The problem, as always, is not a new one. It was well known in ancient and medieval times alike, but different people had their own ways of dealing with it.
Some people simply believed in persuasion. Some nice words on a bench may break the ice and turn the lover’s heart in the desired direction. 'You can try this with men or women alike', as the caption of the image says.
Detail from a herbal, Northern Italy (Lombardy), c. 1440, Sloane 4016, f. 44v
If this does not make a break-through, a picnic set up in an entertaining landscape of flowers, trees and a little brook might bring better results.
Miniature of the duke of true love and his companions entertaining ladies, from the Book of the Queen, c. 1410–1414, France (Paris), Harley 4431, f. 145
You could even include some sport in these outdoor activities and win their hearts in a race. This is how Hippomenes won over Atalanta after beating her in an (actually unfair) running competition. He rolled golden apples in the girl’s way, slowing her down so that he could finally win and get her hand.
Miniature of Hippomenes racing Atalanta, from Harley 4431, f. 128r
Others had completely different methods and, convinced about the power of their poetry and music, bravely revealed their feelings before their lovers. Orpheus did it in a live performance for Eurydice. It worked, melting the heart of Death himself who gave his dead wife back to him.
Miniature of Orpheus looking back at Eurydice, from Harley 4431, f. 126v
Others, probably less skilled in performing arts, preferred to do this in a less direct way and offered luxury editions of their poetry to their loved ones — enclosing their own burning hearts in the volumes.
Detail from 49 Love Sonnets, Italy (Milan?), c. 1425–1475, King's 322, f. 1r
There were some, however, who did not deter even from violence and took what they wanted by force. They fought wars, battled kings and occupied cities, just like Menelaus did when his beloved Helena escaped from Sparta, starting the ten-year long Trojan War. The British Library does not endorse this approach!
Detail from a series of miniatures on the temptations of lovers, from Breviari d'Amour, Southern France (Toulouse), c. 1300-1325, Royal 19 C I, f. 204r
Sometimes, when the above methods have all proven useless, there was one final risky and dangerous method that only a few have ever tried: magic. The British Library houses an excellent collection of ancient love spells and charms from the first three centuries CE. Papyrus 121 (2), one of the largest extant scrolls in the collection, preserves a whole series of uncanny methods of gaining someone’s heart. Column 12 of this extraordinary papyrus, for example, has a special recipe that proved useful enough to be recorded and come down to us in the 21st century. It reads as follows:
Take a shell from the sea and draw on it with myrrh ink the figure of a demon given below, and in a circle write his names, and throw it into the heating of a hot bath. But when you throw it, keep reciting these words 'attract to me XY, whom XY bore, on this very day from this very hour, with a soul and a heart aflame, quickly, quickly; immediately, immediately.' The picture should be as depicted below.
Detail of a love spell, from a collection of magical spells and charms, Egypt, 3rd century, Papyrus 121 (2)
Unfortunately the image to be used in the process was not copied in the papyrus, but other parts of the same document preserve similar images of demons with names written around them that can help us imagine what is needed here.
There is also a special charm to be used in the process that is supposed to guarantee its success but we decided not to replicate it here. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Peter Toth
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10 February 2017
The Flower of Nature
The British Library's Digitised Manuscripts site has recently acquired some new residents, including unicorns, amorous elephants, humans and dragons. These can all be found in the recently digitised Der naturen bloeme or The Flower of Nature (Add MS 11390), a natural encyclopedia and bestiary in Middle Dutch verse.
Add MS 11390, f. 22r
The manuscript is one of only eleven extant copies and contains 571 fantastic illustrations of the humans, quadrupeds, birds, sea creatures, fish, poisonous snakes, insects and crawling animals, common trees, spice trees and medicinal herbs. The text also discusses wells, gemstones and metals.
Add MS 11390, f. 23r
Be warned, however: this bestiary is not rated PG!
Add MS 11390, f. 13r
The text of Der naturen bloeme was written around 1270 by the Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant (b. c. 1200, d. c. 1272) at the request of his patron, the somewhat appropriately-named Nicolaas van Cats. The British Library’s copy was probably made in the first quarter of the 14th century.
Add MS 11390, f. 13v
In addition to its fantastic drawings, it also provides rare evidence of a medieval lending library. An oath, written on the last page, states that its borrower swears on the cross drawn next to the text that he or she will return the manuscript or die. The oath is signed by a woman, in a 14th- or 15th-century hand, who identifies herself as 'abstetrix heifmoeder' ('obstetrix’ meaning midwife).
Detail of an oath, Add MS 11390, f. 94v
Clarck Drieshen
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06 February 2017
A New Opening for the Lindisfarne Gospels
If in the next few months you visit the Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery here at the British Library, you can feast your eyes on a new part of the famous Lindisfarne Gospels (Cotton MS Nero D IV), which we have changed from displaying the letter of Eusebius at the beginning of the manuscript to a page from the Gospel of John at the end:
A text page from the Gospel of St John in the Lindisfarne Gospels (Cotton MS Nero D IV, f. 239v)
While the new leaves don’t contain the Gospels’ more famous illustrations, such as the Carpet Pages, they are a good example of what the majority of the Lindisfarne Gospels looks like: simple text on a page, highlighted by the use of colours on the initial letters marking the start of many of the Gospel verses.
The pages currently on display are taken from Chapter 12, verses 7-25. The text is divided into two columns, with Aldred’s Old English translation visible above each Latin word in small brown ink. The scribe has decorated some (but not all) of the initials at the beginning of the verses; the lowest decoration is simple colouring in of an initial (i.e. the yellow ‘h’ for ‘Haec non cognoverunt…’), while more effort has been placed into other initials, such as the more elaborate colours and use of decorative points on the ‘In’ of ‘In crastinum autem…’. The Roman numerals in the margins are references to both the number of verse and to the corresponding verses in the three other Gospels.
Another text page from the Lindisfarne Gospels (Cotton MS Nero D IV, f. 240r)
Stop by and see the pages for yourself! The Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery is free to enter and open to all members of the public, seven days a week. More information, including current opening hours, can be found here.
And remember, you can view the whole of the Lindisfarne Gospels on our Digitised Manuscripts site. For conservation reasons, we change the pages on display on a regular basis; so be sure to check back in three months’ time to read about the new pages of the Lindisfarne Gospels on view.
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03 February 2017
A Medieval Wikipedia: Bartholomew the Englishman’s On the Properties of Things
The British Library has recently digitised a copy of one of the most popular medieval reference works: Bartholomew the Englishman’s On the Properties of Things (De proprietatibus rerum), an encyclopaedia meant to serve as a reference guide for all of the ‘things’ — a Wikipedia equivalent of the Middle Ages.
The copy just digitised is Additional MS 8785, a vernacular translation produced around the year 1308 in Mantua, Italy, and is full of unique illustrations. The author of the Latin original, Bartholomew the Englishman (d. 1272), was a Franciscan monk living in Paris, and On the Properties of Things (completed around 1240) became a medieval bestseller; there are over 200 manuscript copies of the text surviving today.
Bartholomew the Englishman inspired by Christ to write On the Properties of Things, and next to him a depiction of Christ, marked by the golden halo (Add MS 8785, f. 14r).
Bartholomew divided his encyclopaedia into 19 books on different topics, including natural philosophy and theology, anatomy and medicine, astronomy and astrology, the elements, zoology, botany, geography, geology and mineralogy, among others.
Book 15: On Geography: an image of an ‘Earthly paradise’, featuring two men debating in a rocky landscape before a burning city, surrounded by angels, plants and streams (Add MS 8785, f. 191v).
Additional MS 8785 is notable for being one of the earliest vernacular translations of the encyclopaedia, put into the Italian dialect local to Mantua by a man called Vivaldo del Belcalzer. Nothing is known about Vivaldo except what he writes in the beginning of the manuscript, which is that he presented it — complete with over one hundred illustrations — to the signore of Mantua sometime around 1308.
End of book 19 (section entitled ‘mapa del mond’): a small map of the world with buildings in place of cities, Jerusalem at the centre, divided by the seas; the globe is held by Christ, whose head is at the top, hands at each side, and feet at the bottom (Add MS 8785, f. 315r).
This copy includes more illustrations than most, many of which are situated inside small initials beginning the different sections of the text, known as historiated initials. The most popular book is probably number 18, ‘On Animals’, which was often illustrated and associated with the bestiary tradition (for more on bestiaries, see our recent blogpost on Fantastic Beasts). In addition to depictions of familiar animals — dogs, cats, lions etc — there are also descriptions of a few fantastic beasts, including this page devoted to the so-called ‘monstrous’ races of hybrid humans:
Book 18: On Animals: Fauns and satyrs and monstrous races (Add MS 8785, f. 285r).
It was rare for all chapters of On the Properties of Things to be illustrated, and this is particularly the case for Books 5–7, which dealt with the anatomy of the human body, the four humours and diseases. In these books, the historiated initials beginning each section include small images of organs and other body parts; on the page below, the initial in the left column includes a foot and at top right, a heel. The larger initial ‘S’ towards the bottom right of the page features a robed man holding a book, likely a depiction of one of the medical authors that Bartholomew consulted when compiling the encyclopaedia, whose names are credited in red ink in the margins.
End of Book 5: On the Parts of the Body, and beginning of Book 6: On the 'Simple Members' of the Body (Add MS 8785, f. 57r).
And finally, one of our favourite images is from Book 17 (On Herbs and Plants): a depiction of a vineyard, in which the lady in the centre has perhaps overindulged in the large carafes of wine being offered to her!
Book 17: On Herbs and Plants: A vineyard scene (Add MS 8785, f. 257r).
As Bartholomew wrote in his epilogue, this encyclopaedia was meant to be read by ‘the simple and the young, who on account of the infinite number of books cannot look into the properties of each single thing about which Scripture deals, can readily find their meaning herein — at least superficially’. You can see the entire manuscript on our Digitised Manuscripts site – let us know what meanings you find!
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