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#medieval manuscripts
nyxshadowhawk · 6 months
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Diagrams from a thirteenth-century version of the Ars Notoria.
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fox-teeth · 4 months
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Everyone liked the color charts I test printed for Basilisk so much, I felt compelled made a nice version! Great for anyone that has an interest in Risograph printing, historical pigments, or weird medieval marginalia.
(buy it here)
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maniculum · 6 months
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Medieval Scorpions Effortpost
So yesterday I reblogged this post featuring an 11th-century depiction of the Apocalypse Locusts from Revelations, noting the following incongruity as another medieval scorpion issue:
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The artist, as you can see, has interpreted "tails like scorpions" as meaning "glue cheerful-looking snakes to their butts".
Anyway, it occurred to me that the medieval scorpion thing might not be as widely known as I think it is, and that Tumblr would probably enjoy knowing about it if it isn't known already. So, finding myself unable to focus on the research I'm supposed to be doing, I decided to write about this instead. I'll just go ahead and put a cut here.
As we can see in the image above, at least one artist out there thought a "scorpion" was a type of snake. Which makes it difficult to draw "tails like scorpions", because a snake's tail is not that distinctive or menacing (maybe rattlesnakes, but they don't have those outside the Americas). So they interpreted "tails like scorpions" as "the tail looks like a whole snake complete with head".
Let me tell you. This is not a problem unique to this illustration.
See, people throughout medieval Europe were aware of scorpions. As just alluded to, they are mentioned in the Bible, and if the people producing manuscripts in medieval Europe knew one thing, it was Stuff In Bible. They're also in the Zodiac, which medieval Europe had inherited through classical sources. However, let's take a look at this map:
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That's Wikipedia's map of the native range of the Scorpiones order, i.e., all scorpion species. You may notice something -- the range just stops at a certain northern latitude. Pretty much all of northern Europe is scorpion-free. If you lived in the north half of Europe, odds were good you had never seen a scorpion in your life. But if you were literate or educated at all, or you knew they were a thing, because you'd almost certainly run across them being mentioned in texts from farther south. And those texts wouldn't bother to explain what a scorpion was, of course -- everyone knows scorpions, right? When was the last time you stopped to explain What Is Spiders?
So medieval writers and artists in northern Europe were kind of stuck. There was all this scorpion imagery and metaphor in the texts they liked to work from, but they didn't really know what a scorpion was. Writers could kind of work around it (there's a lot of "oh, it's a venomous creature, moving on"), but sometimes they felt the need to break it down better. For this, of course, they'd have to refer to a bestiary -- but due to Bestiary Telephone and the persistent need of bestiary authors to turn animals into allegories, one of the only visual details you got on scorpions was that they... had a beautiful face, which they used to distract people in order to sting them.
And look. I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum, but I would say that a scorpion's face has significant aesthetic appeal only for a fairly small segment of the population. I'm sure you could get an entomologist to rhapsodize about it a bit, but your average person on the street will not be entranced by the face of a scorpion. So this did not help the medieval Europeans in figuring out how to depict scorpions. There was also some semantic confusion -- see, in some languages (such as Old and Middle English), "worm" could be a general term for very small animals of any kind. But it also could mean "serpent".* So there were some, like our artist at the top of the post, who were pretty sure a scorpion was a snake. This was probably helped along by the fact that "venomous" was one of the only things everyone knew about them, and hey, snakes are venomous. Also, Pliny the Elder had floated the idea that there were scorpions in Africa that could fly, and at least one author (13th-century monk Bartholomaeus Anglicus) therefore suggested that they had feathers. I don't see that last one coming up much, I just share it because it's funny to me.
*English eventually resolved this by borrowing the Latin vermin for very small animals, using the specialized spelling wyrm for big impressive mythical-type serpents, and sticking with the more specific snake for normal serpents.
Some authors, like the anonymous author of the Ancrene Wisse, therefore suggested that a scorpion was a snake with a woman's face and a stinging tail. (Everyone seemed to be on the same page with regards to the fact that the sting was in the tail, which is in fact probably the most recognizable aspect of scorpions, so good job there.) However, while authors could avoid this problem, visual artists could not. And if you were illustrating a bestiary or a calendar, including a scorpion was not optional. So they had to take a shot at what this thing looked like.
And so, after this way-too-long explanation, the thing you're probably here for: inaccurate medieval drawings of scorpions. (There are of course accurate medieval drawings of scorpions, from artists who lived in the southern part of Europe and/or visited places where scorpions lived; I'm just not showing you those.) And if you find yourself wondering, "how sure are you that that's meant to be a scorpion?" -- all of these are either from bestiaries or from calendars that include zodiac illustrations.
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11th-century England, MS Arundel 60. (Be honest, without the rest of this post, if I had asked you to guess what animal this was supposed to be, would you have ever guessed “scorpion”?)
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12th-century Germany, "Psalter of Henry the Lion". (Looks a bit undercooked. Kind of fetal.)
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12th-century France, Peter Lombard's Sententiae. (Very colorful, itsy bitsy claws, what is happening with that tail?)
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12th-century England, "The Shaftesbury Psalter". (So a scorpion is some sort of wyvern with a face like a duck, correct?)
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13th-century France, Thomas de Cantimpré's Liber de natura rerum. (I’d give them credit for the silhouette not being that far off, but there’s a certain bestiary style where all the animals kind of look like that. Also note how few of these have claws.)
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13th-century England, "The Bodley Bestiary". (Mischievous flying squirrel impales local man’s hand, local man fails to notice.)
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13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (A scorpion is definitely either a mouse or a fish. Either way it has six legs.)
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13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Wait, no, it’s a baby theropod, and it has two legs. (Yes, this is the same manuscript, that’s not an error, this artist did four scorpions and no two are the same.))
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13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Actually it’s a lizard with tiny ears and it has four legs.)
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13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Now that we’re at the big fancy illustration, I think I’ve got it — it’s like that last one, but two legs, longer ears, and a less goofy face. Also I’ve decided it’s not pink anymore, I think that was the main problem.)
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13th-century England, MS Kk.4.25. (A scorpion is a flat crocodile with a bear’s head.)
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13th-century England, "The Huth Psalter". (Wyvern but baby! Does not seem to be enjoying biting its own tail.)
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13th-century England, MS Royal 1 D X. (This triangular-headed gentlecreature gets the award for “closest guess at correct limb configuration”. If two of those were claws, I might actually believe this artist had seen a scorpion before, or at least a picture of one.)
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13th-century England, "The Westminster Psalter". (A scorpion is the offspring of a wyvern and a fawn.)
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13th-century England, "The Rutland Psalter". (Too many legs! Pull back! Pull back!)
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13th or 14th-century France, Bestiaire d'amour rimé. (This is very similar to the fawn-wyvern, but putting it in an actual Scene makes it even more obvious that you’re just guessing.)
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14th-century Netherlands, Jacob van Maerlant's Der Naturen Bloeme. (More top-down six-legged guys that look too furry to be arthropods.)
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14th-century Germany, MS Additional 22413. (That is clearly a turtle.)
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14th-century France, Matfres Eymengau de Beziers's Breviari d'amor. (Who came up with that head shape and what was their deal?)
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15th-century England, "Bestiary of Ann Walsh". (Screw it, a scorpion is a big lizard that glares at you for trying to make me draw things I don’t know about.)
I've spent way too much time on this now. End of post, thank you to anyone who got all the way down here.
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BOOK OF KELLS BOOK OF KELLS BOOK OF KELLS BOOK OF KELLS
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medivalt · 11 months
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worry wyrm 💗
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virgocurator · 8 months
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La Bête de la Mer / Tapisserie de l’Apocalypse (Tapestry of the Apocalypse)
Medieval tapestry of the Ignatius of Antioch (Christian saint and martyr)
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kiersau · 1 year
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𝕻𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖛𝖘 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖑 𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖚𝖘𝖈𝖗𝖎𝖕𝖙𝖘
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ghostoflunarviolet · 7 months
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Medieval manuscript Mothman
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cuties-in-codices · 8 months
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elephants and ducks
in "le secret de l'histoire naturelle [...]", illuminated manuscript, france, 15th c.
source: Paris, BnF, Français 22971, fol. 31r
for more medieval elephants go check out @medieval-elephants! :)
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yeoldegodzilla · 24 days
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Sometimes, bored monks would doodle Godzilla in the margins of their manuscripts.
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nsfwbible · 1 year
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A 15th Century tour of Hell
Medieval monks had themselves one hell of a time imagining the demons awaiting sinners in Hell. The illustrations are from Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur (Bodleian MS. Douce 134), a treatise on the Antichrist, the last judgement, and Heaven and Hell.
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colleendoran · 1 year
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Neil Gaiman's CHIVALRY: From Illuminated Manuscripts to Comics
One of the many reasons I wanted to adapt Neil Gaiman's Chivalry into graphic novel form was to create a comic as a bridge and commentary re: comics and illuminated manuscripts.
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We're often told that the first comic book was Action Comics #1 featuring Superman, a collection of Superman comic strips that morphed into comic books as an art form.
Sequential art predates Action Comics #1.
Action Comics popularized sequential art book storytelling that had already appeared in other forms in fits and starts throughout history. Comic books didn't take off as a popular medium for several reasons, not least of which was the necessary printing process hadn't been invented yet and it's hard to popularize - and commercialize - something most people can never see. 
You find sequential art in cave paintings and in Egyptian hieroglyphics. I've read that comics (manga) were invented by the Japanese in 12th century scrolls.
And sequential art appears over and over again in Western art going back well over 1000 years, and in book form at least 1100 years ago.
The most obvious example of early sequential art in Western art - as a complete narrative in sequence - is the Bayeux Tapestry. 
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At 230 feet long, this embroidered length of cloth was likely commissioned around the year 1070 by Bishop Odo, brother of William the Conqueror. It depicts the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the invasion of England by the Normans. (The tapestry was made in England, not in France, but it is called the Bayeux tapestry because that's where it is now.)
Imagine what a task it was to embroider this thing. Whew. And you thought it was hard learning Photoshop.
This work of art is important in the history of sequential narrative, but the Norman invasion is also important to the legend of King Arthur - and another important English legend - for reasons we'll get into later. 
It's complicated.
All this is why you see this art in the background of this page of Chivalry.
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Using the Romanesque art style of the tapestry in panel 1, I've added the Latin phrase "Rex Quondom, Rexque Futurus" - "The Once and Future King", the final words of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as inscribed on King Arthur's tomb, and the title of T.H. White's famous Arthurian novel.  (EDIT) and it has been kindly pointed out to me that QUONDOM should be QUONDAM, which is hilarious and annoying and this is how history gets rewritten by accident.
My original intention was to draw this Bayeux Tapestry scene out and juxtapose it with shots of Galaad interacting with the children, but the two page sequence I imagined didn't really work as well in reality as it did in my head. 
Foremost among my concerns was that the tapestry reference might be too obscure for most readers. I wanted to weave the visual meta-text of Chivalry into the story (For further reading on this project and my use of visual meta-text, symbolism, and history in Neil Gaiman's Chivalry, go HERE. And HERE. And HERE. And Yet again HERE.) in such a way as it would enhance the experience for people who "got" the visual meaning, while not dragging things down for people who didn't. So I cut this scene down to one panel.
The tapestry is a complete, long form comic strip created over 1100 years before some people claim comics were invented. So, I loved being able to reference it here.
But even more interesting to me are the sequential art sequences that appear in illuminated manuscripts - comics in book form.
I once got into a rather vicious argument with an academic who insisted illuminated manuscripts were comics. I said no. She said yes. Then she insulted the lowly comic artist and blocked me on Facebook.
Whatever.
My point was not that you can't find sequential art in illuminated manuscripts. My point is that an illustrated book isn't de facto a comic. Most illuminated manuscripts are illustrated books. Some illuminated manuscripts contain sequential art.
Just because opera is music, that doesn't mean all music is opera.
Just because comics books are books that doesn't mean all books are comic books.
And just because some illuminated manuscripts contain sequential art, that doesn't mean all illuminated manuscripts are sequential art.
But one is.
Let me show you it.
One of the earliest examples of an illuminated manuscript with comic art is The Bible d'Etienne Harding which you can see in this really bad jpg here, sorry, best I could find.
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Created around the year 1109, property of a French Cistercian monk, it combines sequences like this with pages of text and illustration.
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Not a comic book IMHO, but an illuminated manuscript with sequences of text, illustration and sequential narrative.
It's no more a "comic book" than a newspaper is for having text, illustration, and comic strips in it.
IMHO, academic lady.
And here's a look at the Old English Hexateuch (hexateuch refers to the first 6 books of the Bible) which I think is far more visually complex and interesting work, and comes much closer to the illuminated manuscript as comic, but still intersperses large sequences of text and illustration with sequential storytelling sequences. So I don't consider it a comic, but a book with sequential work in it.
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Now this work below is a different matter. This is from the Holkham Bible Picture Book, circa about 1330.
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This thing is genius. It measures a little larger than a modern comic, around 8"x11", and almost every page of it is like this spread here. 231 pages of beautifully rendered art, with repeated use of banderoles - "speech scrolls"  (basically word balloons) -  and captions, and (mostly) real sequential art. I've never seen anything else that comes even close to it, and by all accounts, neither has anyone else. 
It may not be a modern comic book - but it's a comic book as far as I can tell. I don't think there's any other illuminated manuscript that is as complete, sophisticated, and innovative a sequential storytelling work.
If this were printed and seen by more people, the comic book medium would have taken off centuries earlier, IMHO. But it wasn't. It was tucked away in a monastery somewhere and few people ever saw it. It ended up being forgotten for centuries until it popped up again around 1816 when a banker sold it to an avid book collector, Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, who inherited Holkham Hall and its library and set about restoring and expanding it. 
The banker wrote, “a very curious MS. just brought here from the Continent. . . which I think one of the greatest curiosities I ever saw”.
Sequential art got invented over and over and over by one artist after another until one day centuries later, some teenaged boys found their newspaper strips gathered together in a cheap format, and suddenly comic books were popular and like new.
And then a lot of people who didn't seem to realize that books had had pictures in them for centuries got all up in arms about the harms of books with pictures in them.
I think it's funny that it is called the Holkham Bible Picture Book. There really was no "comic" art language when this work was created or when academics began to catalogue this sort of thing. Will they change the name now?
Who can say.
Anyway, another Holkham Bible Picture Book reference for you.
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Look familiar?
I referenced it in this scene in Chivalry.
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One of the fun things about the Holkham is that it opens with a discussion between a friar who has commissioned the work and the artist. The friar admonishes the artist to do a good job on the project because it will be shown to important people. And the artist responds, "Indeed, I certainly will and, if God lets me live, never will you see another such book."
He wasn't kidding.
You can see the entire manuscript HERE. 
Sponsored by my Patreon. Thank you.
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fox-teeth · 2 months
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My Medieval Illuminated Manuscript Palette Risograph Color Chart Print is now back in stock!
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risunsky · 9 days
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It was quite fun to do, and maybe I'll do it again. (Yes, there's a typo, I saw it before posting and chose to keep it because why not.)
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floodsoftears · 4 months
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some little guys i saw today from a book of hours, the little animals are in a procession of the funeral of Renard the fox
the top two are pulling down the line of text to where the scribe forgot to write it in 😭 i just know the illuminators were clowning on the scribe
“brother Bartholomew forgot a line again put a little guy in there”
I’m so lucky that i’ve been able to see this book of hours twice im so spoiled
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upennmanuscripts · 3 months
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LJS 419 is our favorite herbal! It includes paintings of plants, some realist and some... not so realistic. It was written on paper in Italy, over the course of the 15th century. Watch closely and you may see someone you know! Find out more at the 🔗:
(I am trying some different video formats, trying to be a little more dynamic while still doing the page turning action. I'd love to know what you think! Happy new year and here's to 2024!)
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