Learned something fascinating from the Återskapat #podcast. Amica Sundström and Maria Neijman have activated a major #Medieval source material that nobody seems to have touched before. There is no mention of it in the bibliographical databases. The huge KLNM encyclopedia has a single sentence about it: "Seals were often protected by fabric or leather bags and, towards the end of the Middle Ages, by metal cases" (15:194).
The National Archives in Stockholm hold hundreds of these seal bags. They're made from Medieval fabric that has been kept indoors, in the dark, since they were made. They pretty much retain their original colours! It's a fabric sample archive! With calendar dates!
"Few documents that survive from #medieval Europe were written by women or even dictated by women. Those that do are often formulaic, full of legal and religious language. Yet the wills and censuses that survive, and which I study, open a window into their lives and minds, even if not produced by women’s hands. These documents suggest that medieval women had at least some form of empowerment to define their lives – and deaths."
@yvonne Thanks for that interesting article by Prof Joëlle Rollo-Koster, which draws attention to the documentary treasures in store for a new generation of historians while perhaps understating the wealth of evidence accumulated by her own!
The will of one famously independent woman in medieval England is available in the original French with translation & analysis on the resource page at https://barnes1.net/FHGE/
Cantus: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant - Inventories of Chant Sources | Cantus Manuscript Database https://cantus.uwaterloo.ca/
"Cantus is a database of the Latin chants found in manuscripts and early printed books, primarily from medieval Europe. This searchable digital archive holds inventories of antiphoners and breviaries -- the main sources for the music sung in the Latin liturgical Office -- as well as graduals and other sources for music of the Mass."
@medievalists Interesting article, & use of DNA analysis! Chess pieces made of horse, cow & deer bones - and "fashioned by groups (of pawns, of rooks, of bishops and knights and of queens and kings), which testifies to planned, routine activity, probably in a specialized workshop."
🙏 for mentioning the biography by Frances A. Underhill, 'For Her Good Estate'. I edited the expanded 2nd edition. The booksite at https://barnes1.net/FHGE/ includes a resource page with many free downloads, & an account of the Lady's insistence on choral music at #ClareCollege. Book sales support this! the hardback more so.
"It aims to extend the study of the dissemination of plainchant from localized research focused mostly on Europe and the Middle Ages to global research tracing transmission to other continents through to the modern era. "
🙏 @sapiens Such interesting questions from this project!
"Do you own a chant fragment or do you know someone who does? What do you know about its history and travels?"
@ClaireFromClare@medievodons I don't own any fragment or know other individuals that own, besides archives or museums. But there are lot of repositories regarding this kind of music and some of them thoroughly register their origin and whereabouts. You may already know most of them:
"The project ‘The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages’ will show the importance of medieval reading culture as a European movement by bringing together (digitised) manuscripts produced between c. 500 and c. 1550 from across Europe, unlocking their educational potential by curational and editorial enrichment, using innovative ways for displaying and handling digital objects in an educational context."
596 years ago today, Hanseatic cities of Northern Germany retained the services of the privateer captain Bartholomeus Voet, his nine ships and 300 men. With dire consequences for my hometown, Bergen - but also to great annoyance for themselves.
A thread:
The Hansa and the Nordic countries were the best of frenemies at this time. The Hansa traded extensively with the Nordics and often waged war as well, typically allying with one Nordic country against another...
@26aafa19 Great story!
"Since stone carving & installation were the most expensive items for the overall project, the monks decided to tackle that job themselves. This meant learning the whole CNC stone-carving workflow, all about stone cutting machinery, operating CNC machines, CAD modelling, CAM programming, stone masonry & construction techniques...
not without a few disasters..."
The British Library has made available online its entire collection of manuscripts related to Geoffrey Chaucer. Users can now freely access over 60 items, which include many versions of The Canterbury Tales.
Here's #Chaucer depicted in the initial "W" of the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales: "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote..." from Lansdowne MS 851, c.1410.
> A project mapping medieval England's known murder cases has now added Oxford and York to its street plan of London's 14th century slayings, and found that Oxford's student population was by far the most lethally violent of all social or professional groups in any of the three cities.