| Do not want? |
[Mar. 28th, 2008|11:36 pm] |
I just ran across this nifty site, which lets you search the English translations of two dozen late medieval cookbooks online. Naturally, I went looking for the stranger recipes.
From the Goodman of Paris, a late fourteenth-century book of instructions written by a Parisian burgher for his young wife, here are a couple of miscellaneous delicacies.
Hedgehog should have its throat cut, be singed and gutted, then trussed like a pullet, then pressed in a towel until very dry; and then roast it and eat with cameline sauce, or in pastry with wild duck sauce. Note that if the hedgehog refuses to unroll, put it in hot water, and then it will straighten itself.
Squirrels are singed, gutted, trussed like rabbits, roasted or put in pastry: eat with cameline sauce or in pastry with wild duck sauce.
Another one, from the Liber Cure Cocorum, written in England around 1430:
Stewed pigeons. Take pigeons and hew them in small morsels. Put them in an earthen pot. Take peeled garlic and herbs anon. Chop them up small before you do anything else. Put them in your pot and don't leave out the good broth with white grease. Add powder and good verjuice. Colour it with saffron and some salt. Put all these things in your pot and you shall stew your pigeons.
The pigeons probably weren't caught on the street. Medieval people often kept domestic pigeons in cotes.
On the other hand, what to make of this recipe? (Warning: click at your own peril!) |
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| Exit, ----ed by a bear |
[Feb. 11th, 2008|09:36 pm] |
I think this one belongs in the medieval weirdness collection.
"One admired eleventh-century ludus histrionum (play performed by actors) is reported to have featured a tame bear, an actor's naked membra and honey!"
--John Southworth, The English Medieval Minstrel, p. 7, citing Richard Axton, European Drama of the Early Middle Ages, p. 18. |
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| Medieval zombies |
[Jan. 24th, 2008|03:55 pm] |
I heard a lecture today on the horror/worship relationship that medieval sources had with lepers. Halfway through, as the prof was describing people's disgust at the sight of shambling beggars losing their extremities, I had sudden visions of a George Romero film set in medieval Europe.
I wonder if any of the common tropes from zombie movies have their origins in medieval literature? This calls for Serious Academic Research. |
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| New ways to put off essay marking |
[Nov. 27th, 2007|08:28 pm] |
I have a marvelous new source of distraction: Stephen Tomkins' regular web column Loose Canons. It's a miscellany of some of the more bizarre characters from church history. All your favourites are there: the pillar saints, the Cadaver Synod and good old Saint Wilgifortis.
See also The Twelve Days of Kitschmas on the same site. |
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| On monkeys |
[Nov. 21st, 2007|08:40 pm] |
Monkeys show up quite often as pets in the Middle Ages. I wonder why they're no longer popular? Are they hard to housetrain? |
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| Things to do on the weekend in medieval Paris |
[Nov. 15th, 2007|08:24 pm] |
Remind me never again to lead five tutorials and deliver a two hour lecture on the same day. My brains are now leaking out of my ears.
On the upside, my research for today's lecture on medieval urban life provided the following anecdote for my collection of medieval weirdness. It comes from an anonymous Parisian diarist writing in 1425.
On the last Sunday in August, an entertainment was given at the Hôtel known as the Hôtel d'Armagnac in the Rue St. Honoré. Four blind men wearing armour and each carrying a club were put into an enclosure in which there was also a strong pig. They were to have it if they could kill it. They fought this strange battle, giving each other tremendous blows with the clubs -- whenever they tried to get a good clout at the pig, they would hit each other, so that if they had not been wearing armour they would certainly have killed each other. On the Saturday before this Sunday the blind men were led through Paris, wearing their armour, with a great banner in front of them with a picture of a pig on it. In front of this went a man bearing a drum. *
Sadly, this snippet didn't make it into the lecture.
*David Nicholas, The Later Medieval City, 1300-1500, quoting a source that I'm too exhausted to look up and cite properly, p. 302. |
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| To expand on my last post... |
[Oct. 26th, 2007|05:46 pm] |
Chuck Norris iz in Spain, killing d00dz.
All their fortress are belong to him, Xcept SarragoZ
Marsile its king not afraid of Ceiling Cat.
He can has Mahomet and Apollon.
This is too much fun. If I keep sitting here, I'll translate the whole thing. |
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| Puerile and possibly NSFW |
[Oct. 18th, 2007|10:31 pm] |
Because I haven't posted anything puerile and medieval for awhile, I give you another item in my collection of Medieval Things That Must Have Hurt. This image is from John of Arderne's fourteenth-century treatise on surgery for anal fistulae.
( Read more... )
Now aren't you glad you live in the twenty-first century? |
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| Medieval Norman sick days |
[Jun. 28th, 2007|03:00 pm] |
Here's an interesting bit from one of the customals of Normandy. Sometimes the Normans had to decide whether one of the parties in a lawsuit was ill enough to justify delaying court proceedings. The way they did it was to send two agents of the court to the sick man's house to check up on him. The agents were required to come back and report the following formula "N is so feeble that he cannot come to court and in his own house he cannot put on his pants."
I never quite know how literally these formulas were taken.
Reminder: The Henchminion is Not to Be Trusted Party is on Sunday. The Internets at large are invited. Swordfighting at 4:00, pub night starting at 6:30. |
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| Of dead men and Dodo |
[Feb. 13th, 2007|03:38 pm] |
Today's example of medieval strangeness:
"The Frisians had the custom of keeping the body of a murdered man unburied at home, until vengeance had been accomplished, although they were later persuaded to abandon this practice by a holy man, Dodo the Frisian."
--Trevor Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, (2001), p.103, with a footnote citing H. Platelle, 'Vengeance privée et réconciliation dans l'oevre de Thomas de Cantimpré', Tijdschrift voor rechtsgeschiedenis 42 (1974), p. 278. |
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| Trial by combat |
[Jan. 31st, 2007|05:02 pm] |
Courtesy of the British National Archives website, I can now share with you my favorite image of a judicial duel. I give you Blowberme v Stare [1249].
Walter Blowberme, a thief pictured fighting on the left, became an approver, which is to say he agreed to convict some of his thieving accomplices by judicial duels in return for his own freedom. He accused Hamo the Stare of helping him to steal some clothing. The unlucky Hamo lost the battle and is pictured hanging on the gallows. That's what happens if you lie spent in posta longa when your opponant still has half a tempo to play with. But why does Walter appear to be traversing to the left, when that's where Hamo's weapon is? And what are the heads of those duelling batons made of, anyway? Such are the important questions that occupy my day. |
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| Medievalist porn |
[Jan. 12th, 2007|01:46 pm] |
I was leafing through the Boydell and Brewer catalogue in the student lounge of the Centre for Medieval Studies just now. It's a good thing it didn't come with a Buy Now button, or I'd be even poorer than I already am. Check out these titles.
Medieval Obscenities, edited by Nicola F. McDonald. "The essays examine topics as diverse as Norse defecation taboos, the Anglo-Saxon sexual idiom, sheela-na-gigs, impotence in the church courts, bare ecclesiastical bottoms, rude sounds and dirty words, as well as the modern reception and representation of the medieval obscene."
Wolves and Wilderness in the Middle Ages by Aleksander Pluskowski. "The wolf, a common metaphor for vice in medieval Christian literature, is today an iconic symbol of the intense fear and insecurity that some associate with the middle ages. In reality, responses to wolves varied across medieval Europe. Although not dependent on the wilderness, wolves were conceptually linked to this environment - which although on the fringes of medieval society, became increasingly exploited from the eighth to fourteenth centuries, so bringing people and livestock closer to the wolf."
Obscenities is already in the U of T collection, but Wolves isn't yet. I wonder whom I should lobby if I want the library system to buy a particular book? |
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| What an education will do for you |
[Nov. 5th, 2006|10:56 pm] |
Some time back, possibly in the comments of one of ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) night__watch's posts, I was musing about the past participle of the verb "to shit". Is it shitten? Shitted? Shatten?
At last, a reference from the English morality play Mankind (ca. 1470) provides an answer:
I have etun a dyschfull of curdys,
And I have schetun yowr mowth full of turdys
And from John Stanbridge's 1509 Vulgaria, a book on Latin translation for schoolboys:
I am almost beshytten
So now I'm puzzled. If "have shitten (schetun)" is the present perfect tense, what tense is "am beshitten"? Perhaps it's also the present perfect tense, but beshitten is the intransitive form of the verb? Or does the be- prefix simply imply that the shitting has been accomplished thoroughly?
Ah, life's little mysteries... |
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| Strangeness |
[Oct. 10th, 2006|06:42 pm] |
Today's strange medieval law: "If someone steals a beaver, then [the thief] is to pay twelve grivnas." Russkaya Pravda, c. 1035
The Russkaya Pravda is sadly lacking in references to trial by combat, but it does have a lot to say about bees. larkvi, check it out: http://web.grinnell.edu/individuals/kaiser/exrp.html .
The Russians were still practicing trial by combat in the eighteenth century. They called it pole. Maybe this is incentive to finally learn how to read Russian. |
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| Note to self |
[Sep. 23rd, 2006|10:50 pm] |
Someday, when I have time to mess around in the library, I must pick up the Melrose Chronicle and find out what circumstances led Adam, Bishop of Caithness, to be roasted on a spit in his own kitchen in 1222. |
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| Today's medieval wisdom |
[Aug. 30th, 2006|03:57 pm] |
Today's piece of advice comes from the Trotula, an eleventh or twelfth-century text on obstetrics and gynecology. According to Trotula, underage sex causes bad breath.
That is all. |
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| Happy St. Wilgefortis' Day! |
[Jul. 20th, 2006|04:10 pm] |
Today is the feast of St. Wilgefortis. Her main claim to sanctity is that she grew a beard and was crucified. |
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