a gallimaufry

Moomins and memories

It’s the last week of term, I’m finishing my paperwork, waiting for my exam results and thinking about the future and what to do next (learning to drive a car is definitely featuring here; I keep telling  myself that it can’t be as difficult as following a teacher-training course in Dutch, please don’t disillusion me!). Writing more here, and more about books and less about me, is also part of the future. But today I lack energy, time and focus, so instead here are three links for you.

(The Moomins and the Great Flood; detail from the cover art from here)

The first is Jeanette Winterson, writing about the Moomins, and remembering how Finn Family Moomintroll affected her as a ten-year-old. 

I wrote out random words and stuck them on the wall above my bed with flour and water. This got me into trouble but I didn’t care. The words, random, alive, were making a kind of leaf mould in my mind. From that rich and fertile place came language of a different order.

Poetic disorder is how language is made. Only later is it codified. Naming starts as joy. Think of the pleasure a child has in finding words and inventing words and forming sentences that are also shapes. Words are ear and mouth before they are pen and paper. Words run away; you have to catch them.

 

The second is Medieval Memoria Online.

(St Jerome in the Desert, outer panels of an early sixteenth-century triptych made for the Van Beesd Van Heemskerck-Van Diemen family, from the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen; MeMO memorial object ID 504, 25-06-2013)

MeMo is a newly established database of inventories and descriptions of pre-1580 commemorative objects and texts from the Netherlands. It has been set up by the University of Utrecht, and includes images, inscriptions, epitaphs, altarpieces, tomb monuments and archival sources.

Researchers of medieval memoria consider the commemoration of the dead (i.e. memoria) a complex phenomenon, in which prayer for the care of the souls of the deceased, the care for the poor and the sick, commemoration of the deeds of the living and the dead and political aspects are inextricably linked.

It is fascinating...

(Claire Loder, big face, ceramic; from here)

The artist Claire Loder has been working with elderly people in the rural Cotswolds, ‘to help learn or rekindle skills while reminiscing and creating lasting memories in clay’. She has also created ceramic portraits of them, which are being shown in ‘Making Memories’ at New Brewery Arts in Cirencester. Her work is lovely; do go and see it if you have the chance. A commemoration of the living.

naughty mediaeval cats

(Cat’s paw prints on fifteenth-century manuscript in the State Archives of Dubrovnik, photographed by Emir O. Filipović; found here)

(Worse than paw prints! In about 1420 a scribe in Deventer, the Netherlands, returned one morning to continue work on his manuscript to discover a cat had weed on it! In a rage, the scribe drew a picture of the cat and wrote ‘Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum ostum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem uni cattie venire possunt’ – Here nothing is missing, but a cat urinated on this during the night. Cursed be the pesky cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others [other cats] too. And take very good care not to leave books open at night where cats can come. Cologne, Historisches Archiv, G.B. quarto, 249, fol. 68r, found here)

What were cats doing in mediaeval libraries anyway? Read this post to find out...  It contains a link to this charming ninth-century Irish poem, translated by Robin Flowers:

The Scholar and his Cat, Pangur Bán

I and Pangur Bán my cat,
’Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
’Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.

’Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

’Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
’Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

(Picture of cats and rats from unidentified mediaeval manuscript)

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

(Pisanello, Madonna della quaglia [Madonna of the quails], tempera on wood,  c. 1420; Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona)

Hello again! I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long, both here and on your blogs, I’ve fallen completely out of the loop and it feels strange now I have a moment to reflect upon it. I have missed you! The last weeks – maybe months? – have been a frenzy of teacher-training tasks, lengthy viruses and spurts of preparation for Christmas. Finally, all of that is finished and tomorrow we are setting off to stay with my parents in England for a week. From the news I understand that only the highest peaks of Britain are still above water and of course now rather crowded with the entire population clinging to them, so we are packing a boat, candles, tinned food.

In book news I am now deep in an Iris Murdoch binge, I had forgotten how good she is and how much I like her. This follows the Holly Roth detective novel I bought earlier this year, which I am afraid was pretty awful in terms of characterization, plot and style and yet whiled away a couple of plague-ridden hours most pleasantly, and some Ann Bridge, whose novels I enjoy but I have to take in small doses as she is so fearfully bossy.

Anyway, after the holidays I promise I shall write here much more frequently; I’ll reply to Florence’s questions and crack on with the Grimms’ tales. In the mean time, here is one of my favourite Christmas poems: the anonymous fifteenth-century ‘I syng of a mayden’, which survives in one copy, in the British Library (Sloane 2593). You can hear Benjamin Britten’s enchanting setting of it here.

I syng of a mayden
þat is makeles,
kyng of alle kynges
to here sone che ches.

He came also stylle
þer his moder was
as dew in aprylle,
þat fallyt on þe gras.

He cam also stylle
to his moderes bowr
as dew in aprille,
þat fallyt on þe flour.

He cam also stylle
þer his moder lay
as dew in Aprille,
þat fallyt on þe spray.

Moder & mayden
was neuer non but che –
wel may swych a lady
Godes moder be.

(þ is pronounced ‘th’; ‘che ches’ means ‘she chose’)

Merry Christmas, dear readers and fellow bloggers! Thank you for all your comments and all the pleasure your own web-logs have given me this year. May you all enjoy the holidays and let us all look forward to a splendid 2013!

Untitled lyric ('O westron wynd')

It’s a dank dark morning here in Belgium and I am huddled cosily under a blanket in my dank dark study and this poem seeped into my head.

O westron wynde when wyll thow blow
The smalle rayne downe can rayne –
Cryst, yf my love wer in my armys
And I in my bed agayne!

(Anon., 1520; from Paul Keegan, ed., The New Penguin Book of English Verse (London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 2000), p. 74)

There’s a lot of smalle rayne falling here, but it’s nice to be inside and warm. Have a lovely weekend, dear friends!

(Jean Mansel, illuminated page in Vie de Nostre Seigneur Jésus Christ (11.1 x 15.8 cm, fol. 174), fifteenth century;  Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; found here with the following explanation of conception and ensoulment:

This illumination from a fifteenth-century French manuscript shows a couple in bed. The Holy Trinity—father, son and Holy Ghost—watch from the upper left corner and send them a childlike form. This recalls the iconography of the Annunciation. The scroll quotes Genesis from the Latin Bible: ‘Let us create man in our image and likeness’ (Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudem nostram). The slippers by the bed refer to God’s commandment to Moses to remove his sandals before the holy ground of the burning bush, and so point to the holiness of the sacrament of marriage. The woman’s extended right arm probably signifies Eve’s offering the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, reminding us that we all inherit Original Sin at conception. The burning candle on the mantelpiece indicates the beginning of a new life. Ensoulment and conception are tightly linked here, and so probably took place in the same moment, contrary to Aristotelian and vernacular ideas.)

Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, exhibition at the British Library

 

(King David in the Psalms, The Westminster Psalter, London, c. 1200 , British Library, Royal 2 A. xxii, f. 14v © British Library Board)

An exhibition of the British Library’s collection of manuscripts owned by medieval kings and queens of England is opening on 11 November; I am desperate to go and see it but probably won’t be able to do so. It looks wonderful. The collection is of luxury books which belonged to monarchs from the ninth to sixteenth centuries, truly works of art. Because they are books, and thus usually closed, the paint colours often remain almost as vivid as the day they were painted. The press release promises that the books give insight into royal identity, prescribed regal behaviour and moral codes, and politics.

Below is an extraordinary picture from Henry VIII’s psalter (c. 1540) with Henry posing as (a very middle-aged) David. The colours almost hurt your eyes! Henry chose to identify himself with the supposed writer of the Psalms, a great warrior, musician and poet and also the direct ancestor of Jesus;  nothing if not modest. David had an adulterous affair with Bathsheba, and perhaps Henry allows an allusion to his affair and marriage with Anne Boleyn. Bathsheba’s first son by David was struck down with a mortal illness by the Lord; Anne’s son also died (stillborn). Anne had been executed in 1536 and Henry may be affirming that his relationship with her was sinful, the result of (her) witchcraft.

I wish I could decipher the note in the margin...

(Henry VIII as David, Henry VIII’s Psalter, London c. 1540, Royal 2 A xvi © British Library Board)

And here is Henry V, as a yong man and Prince of Wales, from a copy of the Regement of Princes which was made for him. This was an English book in verse which gave exemplars (or ‘mirrors’) of good and bad regal behaviour for a prince to reflect upon. The image shows Henry receiving a copy of that very book from the kneeling author. Incorporating his portrait in the Regement makes him an exemplar as well as a reader, and binds him personally more closely to the lessons of the text.

(Henry V as a young prince, Thomas Hoccleve, Regement of Princes, England, c. 1430–38, British Library, Royal 17 D. vi, ff. 39v–40 © British Library Board)

And this is fabulous in both senses of the word! It’s a map of the pilgrimage route to Jerusalem, drawn by Matthew Paris in around 1250 and forming the preface to a copy of his Historia Anglorum. The itinerary begins in London and then travels by way of France and Apulia, with major stops and landmarks drawn on it.  The camel is enchanting.

(Itinerary to Jerusalem, Matthew Paris, Map to Jerusalem, St Albans, c. 1250, Royal 14 C vii, ff. 2–5 © British Library Board)

Even if I cannot actually get to the exhibition, I will be selling my first-born and only child in order to purchase a copy of the catalogue.

(All captions are those written by the British Library; see here for further information.)

Gothic Ivories Project

 

(Virgin and Child; seated Virgin and Child; Christ standing on the Virgin’s lap; Christ in long robe; twisting movement of Christ; bench; ivory, metal (later crown); Paris (?), first half of fourteenth century (?); Toronto, The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO))

 

The Gothic Ivories Project, launched in 2008 at the Courtauld Institute of Art, is an online database of ivory sculptures made in Western Europe between around 1200 and 1530. The database is accessible to everyone. 

 

(Mirror case; king and queen on horseback; king chucking his lover under the chin; hunters on horseback holding lures for hawks; attendant on foot holding a pair of gloves; corner terminals: four crouching monsters; ivory; French or English, first half or second quarter of the fourteenth century; Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University, Harvard Art Museum)

 

During the Middle Ages an extraordinary array of ivories was produced – diptychs, statues and statuettes, caskets, mirror cases, chess pieces, chaplet beads, combs and hair ornaments – depicting both sacred and secular subjects. Some pieces are exquisitely refined, others cruder but charming.

 

(Chess pieces; left: enthroned king holding a sword flanked by smaller male figures; right: rook, watchman holding a spear and blowing into a horn flanked by two smaller soldiers with shields (?); dog; whalebone, Scandinavian, first half of fourteenth century; Paris, Musée de Cluny-Musée national du Moyen Âge)

 

The intention is to include readily available information on and at least one image of every existing piece of Gothic ivory work; to this end the project is working with museums and collections around the world.

 

 

(Right wing of diptych showing Last Judgement; Register 1: Last Judgement with Resurrection of the Dead (Christ in Glory with his feet on a city, possibly Jerusalem); angels holding Instruments of the Passion (nails, spear; rugged cross); Virgin Mary and St John the Baptist kneeling in prayer; Register 2: angels blowing trumpets; souls rising from their tombs; souls of the blessed received in heaven by angels; souls of the damned thrown into the mouth of Hell; souls including kings, queens, monks, bishops; demons; symbols of the Evangelists with scrolls in the spandrels; St John writing, with his symbol, the eagle; St Luke writing, with his symbol, the calf; angels praying in the voussoirs; ivory, French, c. 1300; Toronto, The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario)

 

Every time I go to the website, I get sucked in and spend hours I do not have poring over these beautiful carvings. The technical skill to tease such fine details out of bone must have been immense and hard-won; there is such a wealth of imagination and artistic creativity, even in those works sometimes dismissed as ‘derivative’ or ‘conventional’ – at least, to me there is. Look at the tiny delicate figures of the Judged in the Last Judgement above, or the elegance of St Catherine below.

 

(St Catherine (?); female saint (St Catherine of Alexandria (?)); sword; book; ivory; Paris, Musée du Louvre, Paris, c. 1380–90)

 

The project is still ongoing and the database will increase in the next few years.

 

(Virgin and Child; seated Virgin and Child; Christ in long robe; Christ standing on the Virgin’s left knee; Virgin holding a flower in her right hand; Virgin trampling a monster (in the form of a dolphin) under her left foot; French (Seine Inférieure or Normandy), last quarter of the thirteenth century; Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts)

 

Captions use information from the website supplied by participating institutions and estimated dates are usually those of the institutions. The photographs are copyright and information about their use is available here.

The Three Hares

Easter is my favourite holiday, celebrating rebirth and redemption and spring and green things as it does. The image to the left is a Syrian or Egyptian pottery fragment of c. 1200, depicting the Three Hares; I found it here.

The symbol originated in China as Three Rabbits and its meaning is unclear; the rabbits may be associated with peace and tranquillity (see the Three Rabbits site for more information about them in China, Tibet and India and Guan Youhui's research). The rabbits journeyed westwards along the Silk Road and other trade routes, becoming hares as they went. There are many representations of them, principally as medieval bosses in churches, documented by Chris Chapman as part of the Three Hares Project.

These Iranian or Syrian hares look triumphant – belligerent, even – and male, striding among the pomegranates – a hint of Persephone? – and causing sap to rise and birds to sing. Happy Easter!

 

Tutivillus, the literate demon

Tutivillus or Titivillus is a demon associated with writing and literacy. In the Middle Ages he was painted on church walls and carved on misericords, bench ends and corbels; he trod the boards as a character in the Towneley Judicium and Mankind; he introduced errors into scribes’ work copying texts and his exploits were described in sermons, conduct books and poems. You can see him lurking beside a monk’s desk in the picture I used for my profile photograph, an expression of concentration on his face, a stealthy claw laid by the ink well (it’s a fourteenth-century image I took from here; the original source is unfortunately not given). Later he haunted printing presses, causing typesetters to make mistakes.

I am very fond of Tutivillus and wrote my MA dissertation about his representations in mediaeval English church art and sermon exempla. Exempla were illustrative stories drawn from folklore, the Bible, everyday life, the writer’s own imagination; they can be found in sermon collections referred to by priests, conduct books and didactic treatises. There are two about Tutivillus. The most common relates how a priest, deacon or saint sees Tutivillus perched high up in a church noting down the idle gossip of parishioners who are chattering rather than paying attention to the Mass; the people talk so much that he must stretch out his parchment with his teeth in order to fit all the words on it; in many versions the parchment breaks, Tutivillus bangs his head on the wall or pillar of the church and the priest laughs and warns the congregation, who usually repent and oblige the demon to erase what he has written.  In the other exemplum Tutivillus is again seen in a church by a man of God, but this time the devil is creeping through the choir with a bulging sack over his shoulder. He explains that he is gathering up all the ‘syalablys & woordys, ouerskipped and synkopyed, & verse & psalymys þe whiche þese clerkys han stolyn in þe qweere, & haue fayled in here seruyse’ (from the Alphabetum Narrationum: An Alphabet of Tales) and stuffing them into this sack. In some versions, after they die the offending monks are sent to Hell where they must carry sacks full of the words they mispronounced in saying Mass and thus stole from God.

I burbled on at length on various aspects of all this in my dissertation, but what I found most fascinating was that both these stories dramatise a spoken sound becoming a visible written mark on a page, a process which must have seemed astonishing to people encountering it for the first time in a culture moving from the oral to the literate. I particularly liked the idea of mumbled words attaining a three-dimensional form and weight and lying on the church floor like lumps of half-chewed bread for Tutivillus to slip into his bag. To me it is all of a piece with the mediaeval love of allegory, of taking abstract qualities and clothing them, with transubstantiation, with approved and transgressive language, with St Augustine’s theory that a person’s mind creates an image of the word when he or she hears it. But this post is already far too long and tortuous, a bit like Tutivillus's parchment, ha ha.

You can see a carving of Tutivillus on a bench end in Charlton Mackrell here and craning in solicitously to hear the tittle-tattle of two ladies of the mid-fourteenth century here, his parchment in his right hoof. Anne Marshall has posted surviving wall paintings here; I have posted her picture of the one in Little Melton, Norfolk, above (a faint Tutivillus can just be perceived standing on the bench to the right).