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Oooh, so not being a medievalist, this one took me a while. One of the most popular books of the late Middle Ages in Europe was the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, a book of “popular theology” that basically analogized old testament events to new, to show that the former predicted the latter and Christianity was obviously true.
One of the Old Testament pages was about Amel-Marduk, a son of Nebuchadnezzar II, who usurped his brother (and was in turn usurped), but was said to have exhumed his father’s corpse and dismembered it, leaving it to the birds. I have run out of steam trying to find the specific manuscript the meme image comes from (somebody else probably could find it), but the iconography is unmistakable.
Ooooh do you know about medieval history?
Not really? Kind of, but only a little? I’m not a trained academic, but rather a huge history buff and general know-it-all who has some formal training and experience in research techniques (mostly legal stuff and public records, but it comes in handy and can be surprisingly applicable). I also try to have respect for the work of actual academics who’ve dedicated their working lives to this stuff and not just stop looking when I find a Dan Carlin podcast.
Sounds good! What are some interesting historical facts you can share?
- One of the major sources of tension in university towns from the very beginning was “town-gown” relations. The students were young, often unsupervised for the first times in their lives, sometimes completely foreign to the region, and afforded certain clerical protections from the secular authorities. Conflicts often started at local taverns.
- Margery Kempe was basically Medieval English Peggy Hill, a good natured try-hard who simply badgered people into doing what she wanted, including negotiating a celibate marriage (interrupted by only one pregnancy), making her priest re-write her autobiography for her because she was illiterate and the previous scribe she retained died and no one could read his handwriting, and pestering the local anchoress until she got something not unlike her approval, and getting arrested for preaching, impersonating a nun, and being a Lollard.
- Speaking of anchoresses, they (and the male anchorites) took a “vow of stability of place,” which generally involved being literally bricked up in a cell tacked onto a church, with openings big enough to get light, air, food, and conversation, but by no means big enough to leave. They were almost treated as being already dead. In return, they got veneration in their lifetimes and the church hierarchy kinda laying off about how weird they could get.
My childhood just came rushing back to me:
Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye, four and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing “Now wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before a king?” The king was in his counting house counting out his money, the queen was in the parlor eating bread and honey, the maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes when down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose.
I thought the king lost his head in that one but apparently not
Huh, that was in a book of nursery rhymes I had as a kid. I never knew the second stanza, though. The version I knew ended after “Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king.”
Thanks for sharing!
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