07 February 2014
Saints' Lives... and Deaths
With the twin goals of our readers’ edification and entertainment forever at the forefront of our minds, we at the BL Medieval Manuscripts Blog have hatched a plan for a series of posts on saints over the coming weeks and months, timed to coincide with their individual feast days.
In devotional compilations such as Books of Hours, miniatures of saints were a common presence alongside biographies of their lives or other texts to be read during private prayer or reflection. The choice of which saints to include in one’s book could be a very personal one. For example, the decoration in the magnificent Bedford Hours (Add MS 18850) was adapted following the marriage of John, duke of Bedford, to Anne of Burgundy.
Prefacing the portion of the manuscript containing suffrages to the saints is a large miniature showing Anne of Burgundy kneeling in veneration before her namesake and patron, St Anne, who is accompanied by her daughter the Virgin Mary, and her grandson, Jesus Christ.
Miniature of Anne of Burgundy, venerating St Anne, St Mary and the Infant Jesus, from the Bedford Hours, France (Paris), c. 1410-c.1430, Add MS 18850, f. 257v
The association of saint and book-owner is continued in the border, for example with Joachim and Clopas, each of whom is identified by different interpretations of the Bible as the father of St Anne.
Miniatures of St Joachim and St Clopas, Add MS 18850, f. 257v
Saints could be depicted in a variety of contexts in manuscript miniatures. On this page of the Bedford Hours, we see them thinking, reading, writing and discussing, enclosed in private alcoves or chambers that evoke the architecture of the medieval palace.
Miniatures of St ‘Salome’, St Alpheus and St ‘Maria Yaque’, and St Zebedee and St Mary Salome, Add MS 18850, f. 257v
By reflecting the reader’s own behaviour and environment as she studied her Book of Hours, these miniatures complemented the text by cultivating her identification with a saint’s life. Enhancing the exemplary of these lives in this way further encouraged the reader to emulate a saint’s virtues or good works, to shape her behaviour according to the saintly mould she held before her.
First, though, a little taster of what is to come of our series of saints. Certain objects or animals became associated with a saint as a consequence of the events of his or her life or the manner of his or her death. These attributes made depictions of saints in stained glass, stone statuary or manuscript books readily identifiable to anyone familiar with their stories.
In Harley MS 2332, we see saints’ attributes being used as a visual shorthand for the dates of their feast days during the calendar year. This physicians’ almanac has appeared a couple of times on this blog before: when we solicited help assigning a date of production on the basis of a series of pictograms and dates attached to them; and when the volvelle on f. 23v appeared in Guess the Manuscript.
The book is small; measuring only 140mm x 100mm, it was designed to be portable. It was made using a less expensive grade of dark and thick parchment, and was quite possibly written and even illustrated by the person who owned it. It was produced perhaps around 1412. It is of English origin, but the selection of certain saints for the calendar at the beginning of the book strongly suggests a connection or at least familiarity with eastern England: East Anglia and Lincolnshire (Sts Guthlac and Edmund), Yorkshire (Sts John of Beverley and William of York) or Northumberland (Sts Cuthbert, Oswald and Wilfrid).
Calendar pages for February, with tinted pen-drawings of the Labour of the Month, zodiac symbol and religious feast days, from an illustrated physician’s almanac, E. England, c. 1411-12, Harley MS 2332, ff. 2v-3r
Each month in this calendar occupies an opening, with the traditional activity of the month and the relevant zodiac symbol on the left. Along the top, symbols provide a quick visual guide to significant dates within the month, with lines directing the reader to when these feasts should be celebrated.
There are the well-known evangelist symbols: Matthew (21st September, f. 10r), Mark (25th April, f. 5r, see below), Luke (18th October, f. 11r) and John (27th December, f. 13r).
Evangelist symbol of Mark, Harley MS 2332, f. 5r
There are also symbols relating to saintly miracles or acts.
Three candles in a chalice, attributes of St Blaise, Harley MS 2332, f. 2v.
St Blaise’s day (3rd February) is represented by candles used in the Blessing of the Throats ceremony, which commemorates his curing of a boy choking on a fishbone.
Hammer and horseshoe, attributes of St Eligius, Harley MS 2332, f. 7r.
The hammer and horseshoe recall the legend that St Eligius (25th June) shod a skittish horse through the novel practice of first cutting off its leg, attaching the shoe, then miraculously reattaching the leg.
St Edmund, king and martyr, holding a ring, Harley MS 2332, f. 4r.
Here the creator of the tinted drawings has conflated two different St Edwards. On the feast day of St. Edward, king and martyr (18th March), he has drawn Edward holding a ring. This refers to a story from the life of St Edward the Confessor, whose feast day is 13th October. A beggar requested alms from Edward the Confessor in the name of St John. Having no money on his person, the king instead gave the beggar a ring from one of his fingers. Certain legends have St John guiding some Englishmen to safety during their pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and handing them the ring to give to the king; others record the saint appearing before the king and returning the ring personally.
Shoe and crozier, attributes of St. Botulph, Harley MS 2332, f. 7r.
Other symbols evoke the subsequent patronage of saints. For instance, St Botulph (17th June), patron saint of travellers, to whom churches at town gates were often dedicated, is represented by a shoe (the crozier poking out of it refers to the fact that he was sometimes referred to as ‘bishop’).
St Jacob/James, dressed as a pilgrim, Harley MS 2332, f. 8r.
St Jacob/James, whose shrine at Compostela was and remains a major pilgrimage destination, is shown as a pilgrim with a walking staff and scallop badge (25th July).
A ship, attribute of St Simon, Harley MS 2332, f. 11r.
St Simon, patron of sailors, and St Jude, patron of last causes, share a feast day (28th October) and are represented by a ship.
And finally (what you’ve obviously been patiently waiting for), some symbols represent the ways in which particular saints were martyred.
Instruments of the martyrdom of St Vincent and St Paul, Harley MS 2332, f. 2r.
St Vincent and St Paul (22nd and 25th January) each hold tools used to kill them: a saw, representing St Vincent’s torture; and a sword, representing the beheading of St Paul.
St Agatha being mutilated, Harley MS 2332, f. 2v.
On the 5th of February, the gruesome mutilation of St Agatha is illustrated.
Instrument of the martyrdom of St Bartholomew, Harley MS 2332, f. 9r.
St Bartholomew, who was flayed alive then crucified, is drawn holding a knife (24th August), alongside the decapitated head of John the Baptist (29th).
Instrument of the martyrdom of St Leodegar, Harley MS 2332, f. 10v.
Leodegar had the misfortune to have his eyes put out with a drill, which instrument is shown next to his feast day on 1st October.
These are just a few examples; we’ll let you figure the rest out! The manuscript is available in its entirety on Digitised Manuscripts. There are still some unresolved puzzles in the manuscript: for instance, does anyone have idea what event was commemorated here?
Erasures and checkerboard pattern, Harley MS 2332, f. 1v.
The title has been erased, and the connecting line to the calendar is heavily smudged – but what is the meaning of the checkerboard pattern, and what might its connection be to the 13th of January?
Keep your eyes out (sorry St Leodegar!) for future posts on saints…
- James Freeman
The Medieval Manuscripts Blog is delighted to be shortlisted for the National UK Blog Awards (Arts & Culture category). For more information about the nomination, see the Awards website.
14 October 2013
Anglo-Saxon Medicine
Do you suffer from asthma, warts or hiccups? Are you fed up with modern medical remedies? If so, we are pleased to tell you that How to Cure the Plague and Other Curious Remedies, by Julian Walker, has just been published by the British Library. Here the author describes for us the state of Anglo-Saxon medicine.
Bald's Leechbook (London, British Library, Royal MS 12 D XVII, ff. 20v-21r.
Medicine in Anglo-Saxon England was a complex mix of charms, the remnants of classical theories and practice, pragmatic folklore, and faith-healing; despite a longstanding reputation for worthlessness, it was perhaps more based on observation than the reliance on astrology and the theory of humours that marked the medicine of the later medieval period. Sometimes the presence of an odd superstition colours the whole, for example in a fairly accurate account of foetal development, which ends by suggesting that a foetus unborn after the 10th month could be fatal to the mother, but mostly on a Monday night. But there are frequent records of practices which are eminently sensible and probably effective.
The oldest surviving medical documents in Old English are from the 9th century, but there is evidence that older texts were not all in Latin. Bald’s Leechbook, Leechbook III and Lacnunga are the most complete texts, all of them in the British Library. Bald’s Leechbook contains some of the best Mediterranean medicine from the 3rd to the 9th centuries, so the learning was by no means isolated. While some of the herbs mentioned in the texts were only available around the Mediterranean, there are directions for the use of materia medica traded from distant areas, frankincense, pepper, silk, ginger and myrrh.
500 years after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, medical practice relied less on the theories of Galen and Hippocrates, but there remained the process of diagnosis by urine-examination and the therapy of balancing the humours by bleeding. Bloodletting was widely used, sometimes causing infection itself, which was treated by herbal poultices; if the bleeding got out of control it could be stopped with horse-dung. A practical side to the control of infection is seen in the injunction not to let blood in summer, when infection would be most likely. There are warnings against taking too much blood, for example ‘if you let too much blood then there is no hope for his life’; presumably this happened on occasion.
Anglo-Saxon medical recipes corresponding to Book 2, Chapter 59 of Bald's Leechbook (London, British Library Harley MS 55, f. 1r)
There is little documentation of surgery, compared to other forms of healing, though the archaeological record indicates some successful trepanation, and later there are some gruesome images of how to treat haemorrhoids. The use of splints for broken limbs is mentioned only twice, texts offering salves and poultices as treatment for fractures. Wounds are to be sewn up with silk, which would gradually dissolve – there is even a description of surgery to correct a harelip. Poultices that had antiseptic effects were applied over sutured wounds, with herbs such as lesser centaury used to help healing.
The use of herbs, individually or together, was of great importance in medicine at this time; though there are difficulties in finding exactly corresponding names in the modern flora, many common native plants found some use in medicine. Imported plant matter was often added, so that a recipe in the Lacnunga for a wen salve includes pepper and ginger as well as radish, chervil, fennel, garlic and sage, in a list of 16 plants. Tested through the centuries, herbal remedies connect the past to the present – Bald’s Leechbook contains a recipe for a nettle-based ointment for muscular pain, similar ointments being commercially available now. Leechbook III contains a large number of remedies using only native ingredients; their names are not Anglicised Latin names, implying that this reflects a largely home-grown practice.
Materials other than herbs were also in use. One recipe, quoted in How to Cure the Plague, recommends eating buck’s liver for night vision loss, and indeed the Vitamin A in liver would help this condition. Unlike in Mediterranean medical practice, the use of animal faeces is recommended only rarely, but spittle, snails, urine, worms, weevils and ants are called for, as well as the less startling pigeon’s blood, lard and ale. On occasions the improbable and the feasible were combined, one recipe for a burn including silver filings, bear’s grease, thyme, rose petals and verbena.
Detail of Bald's Leechbook (London, British Library, Royal MS 12 D XVII, f. 20v).
Though learning was largely connected to the church, not all physicians were clerics. Prayers and charms were both used, but possibly the charms were less likely to be adminstered by priests. No doubt many charms worked through assurance and faith. One area that has interested me for a long time is the process of healing by touch at a remove. Bede, writing in the 8th century, tells the story of the death in battle of the Christian king Oswald, whose body was mutilated and set on a stake; people took soil from the place, put it in water, and used this to relieve the sick. While raising questions about the nature of touch and its continuing relevance (the desire to touch celebrities, the fascination of the possessions of the famous), this also provides an exact mirror to germ theory, and a model for both contagion and healing.
In our world of healthcare systems in crisis and general reliance on prescription or non-prescription medicines and a variety of alternative therapies, we are not so far from the charms and prayers, the herbal folklore and amulets of the Anglo-Saxons. Their frequent use of the number nine in healing rituals (charms or prayers are directed to be repeated nine times) may have been a way of marking the period of time for a salve to take effect or a mixture to boil, or may have been a ritual. A shadow of the ritualistic element perhaps survives in directions for antibiotics to be taken ‘three times a day for seven days’.
How to Cure the Plague and Other Curious Remedies is available from the British Library Shop, priced £10 (ISBN 9780712357012).
Julian Walker
07 October 2013
Fancy Another Giant List of Digitised Manuscript Hyperlinks?
As promised back in July, we have an updated list of digitised manuscripts to offer you, our loyal readers. This master list contains details of everything that has so far been uploaded by the Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts department, complete with hyperlinks to each individual record on our Digitised Manuscripts site. You can download the Excel spreadsheet here: Download BL Medieval and Earlier Digitised Manuscripts Master List 07.10.13
Miniature of King Alfonso V praising our spreadsheet as Bishop Juan de Casanova looks on, from the Prayerbook of Alfonso V of Aragon - a new arrival to our list! produced in Spain (Valencia), 1436-1443, Add MS 28962, f. 14v
We should have another new list for you in 3 months - happy hyperlink clicking!
- Sarah J Biggs
04 July 2013
Fancy a Giant List of Digitised Manuscript Hyperlinks?
One of the most common types of enquiry we in the Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts department receive is whether or not a particular manuscript has been uploaded to the Digitised Manuscripts site (second only in frequency to the question of how we have gotten to be so fabulous). This latter mystery has no simple explanation, but hopefully in future it will be easier to answer the 'Is it digitised yet?' question. We have put together a master list of all of the manuscripts that have been uploaded by our department, including hyperlinks to the digitised versions; you can download an Excel version of the file here: Download BL Medieval and Earlier Digitised Manuscripts Master List 04.07.13
Miniature of Jacob’s dream of the ladder, before Psalm 80, with a curtain above, and a bas-de-page image of cannibalistic grotesques pointing to our spreadsheet, from the Rutland Psalter, Add MS 62925, f. 83v
A few notes - this list covers only material from the Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts collections, mostly items digitised as part of the Greek, Harley Science, Royal, and Medieval Manuscripts projects. The spreadsheet is currently sorted by shelfmark, although of course you can do what you like with it. We will be updating this list every three months, and the newest versions will be posted on this blog.
Enjoy!
19 June 2013
New Acquisitions in Manuscript and Print
On 5 June 2013, the British Library bought four lots in the Mendham Sale at Sotheby's, London. The Library's view was that the sale was regrettable, and Roly Keating (our Chief Executive) expressed his reservations as joint-signatory in a letter published in The Times on 11 May. However, once it became clear that the sale would go ahead, a decision was made to try to purchase certain lots, in order to preserve some of the Mendham books for the national collection and to maintain public access to them.
The new acquisitions comprise two Books of Hours, one in manuscript and the other printed, together with two incunabula. The dispersal of the collection involved the risk that books hitherto available for research in the United Kingdom would leave the country or disappear into private hands. The British Library already has outstanding collections of manuscripts and of early printed works, so adding these books to our collections guarantees their availability to a worldwide research community now and in the future. Moreover, Joseph Mendham’s collecting activities meant that he acquired many early printed books that were unlikely to attract the attention of the institutional libraries or bibliophilic collectors of his era.
Image reproduced by permission of Sotheby's.
Book of Hours, Use of Sarum, with additions including Middle English verse by John Lydgate
Southern Netherlands, middle of the 15th century
This Book of Hours was probably made in Bruges for the English market. Early in its history the manuscript was adapted for use by a female patron, and a number of Middle English devotional pieces were added to it, among them a version of John Lydgate's Shorte tretis of the 15 joyes of Oure Lady. Not only is the context is which this manuscript was produced of great interest, but its various additions have immense research value; we are delighted that it will soon to available to researchers in our Manuscripts Reading Room.
Image reproduced by permission of Sotheby's.
Book of Hours, Use of Sarum
London: John King for John Walley, 1555. 8º.
This small Catholic liturgical book, produced during the reign of Queen Mary I (1553–1558), is beautifully printed in red and black, and is a unique survival in excellent condition. John King and John Walley were both early members of the Stationers' Company in London, and King's printing shop was next to that of the Royal Printer, John Cawood. Although the text was also produced on the Continent for the English market, fewer editions were produced in England. All editions now survive in small numbers, mainly because the books were heavily used and then discarded when new editions became available.
Image reproduced by permission of Sotheby's.
Martinus Magistri (or de Magistris), Tractatus consequentiarum
Paris: Felix Baligault, 20 August 1494. 4º.
Bound with Johannes de Sacro Bosco, Tractatus de sphera
[Paris]: Felix Baligault, [1494]. 4º.
Martinus Magistri’s treatise on the theory of consequence was composed by one of the leading nominalist scholastic philosophers in late-medieval Paris. Having reached its height in the 14th century, a revival in the study of consequence took place after nominalist teaching was reintroduced at the University of Paris in the 1480s. Medieval theories of this kind have become of increasing interest to modern logicians, but the texts survive in few copies. Of the 7 known editions of Magistri’s work, only 2 could be found in United Kingdom libraries, and none was previously in the British Library’s collections.
The Tractatus is bound with Johannes de Sacro Bosco’s astronomical treatise, De sphera, one of the most widely-read introductions to astronomy in the Middle Ages, surviving in numerous manuscript copies and over 80 early printed editions, 14 of them from the 15th century. None is common; these were very much books to be read and used.
Image reproduced by permission of Sotheby's.
Sixtus IV, Bulla extensionis indulgentiarum …
[Rome: Georg Lauer, after 1 September 1480].
Indulgences were widely sold as part of the fund-raising effort to support the Knights of Rhodes against the assaults of the Ottoman Empire. Only one other copy of this printing is known, held at Munich University.
These four new acquisitions will soon be available to researchers in the Manuscripts Reading Room and the Rare Books and Music Reading Room at the British Library.
30 April 2013
How the Camel Got the Hump
Some of you may be familiar with the Just So Stories of Rudyard Kipling (1902), which include "How the Leopard Got His Spots", "How the Elephant Got His Trunk", and "How the Camel Got His Hump". We like to think that Kipling, a man of letters, might have been able to draw inspiration from the British Library's collections when concocting these tales, not least when it came to his famous story of the camel.
Two camels in the Marvels of the East (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 101v).
Have you ever asked yourself what a camel looked like in medieval times? Marvellously, we have some idea, thanks to drawings found in three of the greatest Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, all at the British Library: the Beowulf-manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A XV); the Old English Hexateuch (Cotton Claudius B IV); and an illustrated miscellany from 11th-century Canterbury (Cotton Tiberius B V).
Ants and camels in the Marvels of the East (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 101v).
In the text known as the Marvels of the East is a passage describing ants the size of dogs, which live beyond the river Gorgoneus, and dig up gold from the earth. Men seeking gold are described crossing the river with their camels, leaving the young tied on their own side; the she-camels are laden with gold and return to their young, but the male camels are left behind, for the ants to devour, enabling the thieves to escape. In the Beowulf-manuscript, this scene is depicted by a large miniature (sadly damaged by fire), in which three dog-like ants attack a tethered camel on the right, while a man holds another camel bearing a saddle, and a young camel (or brontosaurus, take your pick) is tied to a tree at the bottom. In the copy of the same scene in the illustrated miscellany, a camel is attacked by ants while a man crosses the river to safety on the back of a she-camel.
The dog-sized ants and the camels (London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B V, part 1, f. 80v).
If this wasn't enough to give the male camel the hump, what else was? Well, in the Beowulf-manuscript, the next scene, describing a place where many elephants are born, is illustrated with two slightly grumpy-looking camels (shown at the beginning of this post). Presumably the camels are saying to each other, "Doesn't the artist know what an elephant looks like?" The illustrated miscellany represents the same passage (in Latin, "in his locis nascitur multitudo magna elephantorum") with a pig-like elephant standing on an island.
The elephant in an Anglo-Saxon illustrated miscellany (London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B V, part 1, f. 81r).
Of course, it's highly likely that few Anglo-Saxons had ever seen a camel in real life, and so we should not be surprised that their pictures of them are quirky, to say the least. But is this a world-first, a chorus line of dancing camels? Riverdance, anyone?
A line of camels in the Old English Hexateuch: part of Genesis, chapter 24 (London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B IV, f. 39r).
You can read more about the manuscripts of the Marvels of the East in the facsimile of the same name by Montague Rhodes James (Oxford: The Roxburghe Club, 1929). For the Hexateuch, see Benjamin C. Withers, The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch: The Frontiers of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England (London: The British Library, 2007). And don't forget to look at our Digitised Manuscripts site, to see both the Beowulf-manuscript and the Hexateuch in their entirety.
19 April 2013
Guess the Manuscript!
It's Friday, so let's have some fun. This is one of the British Library's collection items -- can you guess which one? A clue: it can be found on our Digitised Manuscripts site.
And here is the answer: it's the binding of a 15th-century physician's folding almanac, Harley MS 937, which was recently digitised as part of our Harley Science Project.
London, British Library, MS Harley 937, f. 1r.
Thank you to everyone who attempted to identify this item, and especially to @ainoa_castro, @yorkherald and Jen Kubeck for being the first to name it correctly. Doubtless we'll play this game again -- watch this space.
Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, @blmedieval.
01 April 2013
Loch Ness Monster Found at British Library
Researchers at the British Library have found sensational evidence for the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. Hidden within the pages of a 12th-century manuscript is not only a description but also a drawing of the beast known to millions as Nessie.
Loch Ness in Scotland, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; image of the British Library, London, from Wikipedia
Walter of Bingham (d. c. 1197) was a minor cleric from Nottinghamshire who, unable to fulfill his vow to go on the Third Crusade, made a pilgrimage to the holy sites of Scotland. William's own manuscript of Itinerarium Scotiae (The Journey Through Scotland) has been long neglected , but shows the author's fascination with Scottish history, customs and wildlife. One commentator has remarked that "Walter of Bingham is to Scotland what Marco Polo is to China". The tone of The Journey Through Scotland emulates the writings of Walter's famous mentor, Gerald of Wales, who wrote accounts of Ireland and Wales in the 1180s and 1190s.
Walter’s encounter with Nessie came one summer evening, as he approached the banks of the River Ness. Students of the Loch Ness Monster will be aware that in the earliest account, found in Adomnán’s Life of St Columba (written around AD 700), Nessie was seen not in the loch but in the neighbouring river; and this is corroborated by Walter’s story. Seeking safe passage across the river, Walter of Bingham asked a group of fishermen mending their nets, but they rejected his request with terror in their eyes. Next, walking downstream, Walter encountered a young boy dragging his coracle along the shore. Hesitating at first, the boy agreed to row Walter of Bingham across in return for a silver coin. They crossed without mishap, much to Walter’s displeasure, for he was self-confessedly thrifty; but as he watched the coracle heading back to the other shore, a great beast with fire sparking from its eyes suddenly erupted from below the waters, uttered an almighty roar, and then dragged the coracle and its unhappy occupant beneath the waves.
The Loch Ness Monster, and the boy in the overturned coracle, as seen with the naked eye (London, British Library, MS Cotton Hilarius A. XV, f. 104r). The page is now exceedingly faded, but the image can be recovered using RZS©.
Walter of Bingham’s account provides firm proof of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster in the 12th century. But what is perhaps more remarkable is the drawing of Nessie which accompanies the text, now severely faded and barely visible with the naked eye. The drawing’s significance was first recognized by an international team of imaging scientists, cryptozoologists and manuscript experts, who for the past year have been analysing the British Library’s pictures of mythical beasts. Using a pioneering technique known as Re-Zoom Spectroscopy (RZS), the scientists took multiple photographs of the page in question, which were overlaid and processed using a “Guggenheim manipulator”. The resulting image demonstrates that Walter of Bingham made a careful depiction of Nessie, and can now be revealed as the earliest known picture of the Loch Ness Monster.
The Loch Ness Monster, as recovered using RZS©. Walter of Bingham is depicted on the right (an early example of a self-portrait), with the wretched occupant of the coracle about to be tossed into the water.
The shape of Nessie as recorded by Walter is hugely significant. Traditionally, the Loch Ness Monster is depicted in serpentine form, often with long humps protruding above the waves. The beast seen by Walter of Bingham most closely resembles a gigantic bear, and experts suggest that it may have been an enormous cousin of the modern-day Grizzly Bear or Kodiak Bear, now restricted to North America, or perhaps a descendant of the extinct Cave Bear. To judge by the survival of animal bones, the presence of a massive bear in remote, 12th-century Scotland is not entirely unexpected, and its behaviour indicates that, when observed by Walter of Bingham, it may have been defending its territory or guarding its young. But this is the first occasion that Nessie has received plausible identification as a bear: perhaps a relict population of bears survived in the vicinity of Loch Ness for many years, giving rise to the legend which surrounds it.
Could this be the oldest picture of Nessie? (recovered using RZS©).
Angus McFadden, a veteran monster watcher, believes that Loch Ness still holds many secrets. As he recently declared, “If you don’t see what you don’t see, and you don’t know what you don’t know, how can you know what you don’t see?”
We are extremely grateful to Professor Otto Haas (Osnabrück), Dr Ida Winchester (Delaware) and their team for sharing their research with us. A full account of the discovery will be published in the Journal of Applied Cryptozoology, but for regular updates subscribe to our Twitter feed @BLMedieval.
An artist's reconstruction of the Loch Ness Monster, restoring what are believed to be the original colours, based on detailed study of the pigments used in comparable western European drawings (Sarah J Biggs, 2013).
Word of warning
We'd like you to believe that this was true, but this blogpost was published on 1 April 2013. The events it describes are, sadly, fictitious. We hope you had as much fun reading it as we did writing it!
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