In a lot of ways, a manuscript page is like a live on-location news broadcast from a sports stadium.  You know, when the local TV affiliate sends a reporter to the big game, they turn towards the camera and ignore the crowd behind them, going out of their way to stick to the story at hand.  People in the crowd, on the other hand, seeing the camera, go out of their to act like asses: they laugh and point, make bunny ears, chant USA! USA! USA! because HOLY CRAP DO YOU SEE THAT CAMERA?! DUDE!!!  I’M ON TV!!!!!*

As a general rule, you see the same hierarchy on the manuscript page.  The main-text illuminations act like the reporter: they stick, more or less, to the subject of the text around them and if they see the figures in the margin at all, they make little indication.  The figures in the margin, on the other hand, are the hooligans.  They point and laugh at the stodgy main-texters, ape and parody their stances and gestures, drop their pants and moon them, etc.

To put it another way, the pictures in the main image act like they live in a world completely separate from what goes on in the margins.  Though the marginal figures can see in, they can’t see out.  But for every general rule I devise about manuscript pages, there are exceptions aplenty.  The image at the top of this post, from Bodleian Library MS Liturg. 198, is one of those exceptions.

The main illumination is a depiction of David and Goliath.** But in the upper left corner of the illumination, one of the main-text inhabitants is making a break for the margin!  Here’s a closeup:

Not only does this main-text-dwelling guy realize there’s a marginal world out there, he’s decided to go join it, leaving his little tower home behind.  Moreover, eagle-eyed readers may spot that this coward is, apart from the colors, dressed exactly like David, down to the little buckle purse on his tunicish-skirt thing.***  We’re probably meant to contrast this pusillanimous escape attempt with David’s courage in standing up to the Philistine giant.

But it’s probably also supposed to be a joke.  Goliath is so scary, he causes people to abandon the image that contains him and take their chances out in the margins with all those monkeys and weird grotesques.  And further, this is a joke the artist tells at least one other time.  A few pages later, we have this image of a man apparently so bored by the sacral goings-on in the main text illumination he’s willing to leave it in favor of the company of this marginal fiddler.  Like so:

 
The fiddler, in yet another layer of role reversal, seems to be pretending not to notice the pleading hooded main-text man.  And frankly, if I were him, I’d avoid the red hooded guy, too.  Dude seems like he’s the clingy type.

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*Woooooooo!!! Go Braves!!!!! Woooooooo!!! Hi Mom!! You raised a jackass with no sense of decorum but a surplus of exclamation points and o’s! Wooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!
**What, you didn’t know Goliath dressed like a 13th-century knight? Historical recreation wasn’t high up on the medieval agenda. You can tell it’s Goliath because of the bloody stone in the middle of his forehead.
***SCAers will know what that’s supposed to be called and inform me soon, I’m sure.

The other day I had to contact the good folks at X-Box Live to resolve an account issue, and when I gave my login name (GotMedieval, for the record), the account representative on the other end laughed and asked tentatively, “You’re not the dude from the blog, are you?”

That’s right, I’m that famous.  I’m “customer service slaves in call centers recognize me by Gamertag”-famous. And such fame comes with rich rewards, too, apparently.  Check out the new duds my X-Box Live Avatar is sporting:

Thanks to my recurring awesomeness, my avatar’s now adorned with the period authentic costume worn by Dante on the cover of the recent scholarly edition of Dante’s Inferno™. So my master plan seems to be coming together at last.  Run a niche academic comedy blog for several years, build a following, then once the swag is trickling in, update only sporadically.

There is one fly in the ointment, however.  Flush with excitement over my new virtual duds, I booted up my copy of Lips Party Classics* yesterday, signed in, and prepared to belt out a few verses of “The Gambler” while wearing my Dante duds.  But much to my surprise (and disappointment!), my cool new threads were too cool for some censor at Lips HQ.  Witness the bowdlerizing of Dante’s signature look:

Apparently, red fabric crosses stitched directly to your flesh are not family appropriate. Who knew?

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*Mock me not, hardcore gamers.  Sometimes, a man’s gotta sing.  And it’s not like I play American Idol Encore 2 or anything.

A reader wrote me recently:

I joyfully read your blog when I get a chance, and thanks to you have a new-found appreciation for margin work. Your recent entry on the scribe, a subject near and dear to my own heart, has intrigued me.  I’d very much like to see more of that manuscript, and my own search has failed to locate it.

Unfortunately, Yale has put the digital edition of MS 229 behind the wall separating their intra- and internets, so it’s only searchable by those with the right credentials.*** But your loss is my gain, readers, as it allows me to dole out cool images from said manuscript one-by one. Images like this one:

I’ve featured mock-jousts here before, but this one might be the most popular of all the weird-thing vs weird-thing motifs during the Middle Ages: a guy jousting a girl.  The joke is pretty basic.  You see, girls aren’t supposed to joust.  So when you see one jousting, it’s like, “Holy crap, a girl jousting is counter to my expectations; I must laugh now to relieve the cognitive tension this disjunction has temporarily induced.”  The representative above has the added bonus of a little monastic jibe as well.

Here’s the same theme, with a little hot girl-on-girl action**** thrown in to boot, from a misericord in Bristol Cathedral:

Silly woman-on-the-right, jousting on a bird!  Don’t you know that only works if you’re a knight in the far future and your enemies include pterodactyls?

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*Ok, so the headline’s a little misleading, I know, but my page rank has tanked since my impromptu hiatus.  How will I bring medieval artifacts to the masses if I’m no longer the top hit for “medieval boobs” or “lady gaga medieval”?
**See also: the gruesome bunny/dog match and the gastropodocalypse.
***I should note that the original letter writer wrote back to tell me she’d managed to hack her way through to the manuscript.  I don’t support such activities, as they ruin my one-by-one doling plans.
****Look at that page rank just shoot up!

A helpful reader submitted this to me a few months ago, and in my quest to finally get caught up (for real this time, no more excuses), here it be, a guide to wooing ladies in 1353 from Flight of the Conchords:

Woo woo woo woo woo woo woo, readers, I have just wooed you.

I just had possibly the most important realization of my entire medievalist career. 

Why did I never notice before today that Arnim Zola is a Blemmyae? 

Check it out:

One of them is a former-Nazi biochemist and the occasional foe of Captain America. The other is a representative of a fictional race of headless monsters thought in the Middle Ages to cluster at the edges of the world (and possibly Sudan). One of these images comes from a comic book, the other is [similar to the one which hails] from Cotton Vitellius A.XV,* the famed Beowulf manuscript. And yet I find it virtually impossible to say which is which!!

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*Yeah, I jumped the gun on the ID there.  It’s easy to forget that all the art in Cotton Vitellius looks like it was drawn by someone who had their eyes closed.  My bad.  That one looks like this:

At long last, let’s get to these saints in the second half of June, shall we?

June 22: The Feast of St. Alban

Alban isn’t pictured above, but rather with the saints for the first half of June, because apparently the artist had to move him over to make room for John the Baptist’s lamb. (SPOILER ALERT: John the Baptist had a lamb!)  Alban was the first British martyr, sentenced to death in the stead of a Christian priest whom he sheltered against Roman persecution.

He wasn’t just any old martyr, actually–he was one of those martyrs who lets everybody know he’s going to be martyred, in his case first by parting a stream that had flooded and was keeping him and his executioners from arriving at the right execution spot, then by converting the first executioner to Christianity with his pious example.

The second executioner was, of course, successful, because he was going with that old reliable saint-killing technique, the beheading. But to Alban’s credit, the executioner’s eyes did magically fall out once the death blow had been dealt.

June 23: The Feast of St. Ethelreda  AKA Æthelthryth or Æðelþryð (for you Anglo-Saxon purists out there)

St Ethelreda was not, as you might suspect, just Aethelred the Unready in a dress.  Rather, she was an Anglo-Saxon queen famous for marrying Anglo-Saxon kings and then piously not sleeping with them.  According to the Bede, however, she died of a throat tumor as punishment for her youthly fascination with gaudy necklaces, so let that be a lesson for all the vain women who read this blog: you think you’ll be able to make it better by finding a series of kings, marrying them, and piously withholding sex from them, but you can’t, so why not give a poor king a chance?*  You’re getting throat cancer either way.

Now the last week of June puts me in an uncomfortable place.***  I try not to snark too hard at the saints who actually appear in the Bible, and in quick succession June brings us The Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist and The Feast of SS Peter and Paul on June 24 and June 29, respectfully.

My reticence is not born out of any great piety; mostly, I figure all the good jokes about the Bible have already been made by now, what with it being the sacred book of Christianity for going on seventeen centuries now.  So I’ll just sign off by noting that I don’t know who looks scarier in the picture above, Paul with his fearsome sword or Peter with his fearsome sword-sized double-edged key.   I’d like to imagine the image is the result of a Crocodile Dundee-esque exchange along these lines:

INTERIOR BIG CHURCH – DAY
SS Peter and Paul are having an argument over whose name should get top billing in the name of their joint feast. Things have gotten ugly.

ST PAUL
St. Paul brandishes his very large but still knife-like sword.
Watch out, I’ve got a knife!
ST PETER
(In an Australian accent) That’s not a knife.
He pulls out a key that’s easily the length of his arm.
THIS is a knife.
ST PAUL
No… I’m not sure what that is, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a knife.  A key maybe?  It kind of looks like a key.  Or maybe it’s a mace?  Or a flail?  Have flails been invented yet?
ST PETER
You were right the first time.  It’s my key.  My key from Jesus.  He gave it to me because I’m the rock on which he’s going to build his church.
ST PAUL
You’re not a rock. THIS…
St Peter steps to the side, revealing that Dwayne Johnson has been standing behind him the whole time!
ST PETER
(interrupting) Jesus Christ! It’s the Rock!!
THE ROCK (DWAYNE JOHNSON)
That’s right.  And if you don’t stop taking the Lord’s name in vain, I’m going to introduce you to the People’s Elbow.
The Rock turns to the camera and lifts one eyebrow dramatically
ST PAUL
Do you smell what the Rock is cooking, blasphemer?
ST PETER
I do.  And while I appreciate the sentiment, I wasn’t taking the Lord’s name in vain.  I was just talking to my buddy here…
St. Paul steps aside to reveal that Jesus Christ was standing behind him THE WHOLE TIME!!!
Say hello to my little friend.
ST THOMAS
Hey, I thought He was supposed to be in Heaven.  I touched the wounds and everything!

Hollywood, you know where you can find me.

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Reportedly,** the Spin Doctors song “Two Princes” is an oblique reference to her saintly biography.
**Reported in the Journal of Things I Just Made Up, vol 2 (new series), issue 3 (Spring 2010), pp. 123-45.
***Reportedly,*** this is the reason why this post was so delayed.
****Ibid.

Hey, there’s a holiday for moms, right?  Y’know, a day set aside to tell your mom or the mother of your kids or a woman walking down the street that you assume must be a mother because of the baby carriage and the matching hair color but then she cops an attitude and says she’s just babysitting and oh my god how gross to think of her with kids she’s not even graduated yet how much you think of them and all they do.  I’m pretty sure a day like that happens every year around this time…

Aaaaanyhooo, here’s your Medieval Marginalia for the week of Mother’s Day.  (Hope it’s coming soon, or else this post will only draw further attention to how far behind I am!!)  It’s a monkey who happens to also be a mom:*

I should probably point out that this image is only half appropriate for a day in honor of moms, because according to medieval legend, monkeys are terrible parents exactly half of the time.  As the bestiaries relate, medieval monkeys always give birth to twins.  One of the twins the mama monkey loves and dotes upon, the other she hates and ignores.  She carries the good kid in her arms and forces the bad one to cling to her back.  But on account of the irony,** when threatened by hunters, the mama monkey drops the beloved child as she runs off, and the hated child clings to her back against her will, leaving her only with the child she pissed off once the hunters are gone.

So this Mother’s Day–whenever it is–be thankful that your mom isn’t a medieval monkey.  Though come next Mother’s Day, you could always drop by my CafePress store and get a magnet with the medieval mama monkey on it.  Then you can have all the fun of explaining to your mom that you don’t mean to imply she’s a monkey or anything, or that she’s a bad parent, or that you intend to cling to her back–on second thought maybe the magnet is a bad idea.***

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*But on the off chance that she’s just babysitting for an older monkey, don’t go up to her and be all “Happy Medieval Monkey Mother’s Day!!” Just tell her that the kid looks cute.  Not her kid.  The kid.  Trust me on this one.
**Apes love irony!
***But such an attractively priced bad idea!

Just in case anyone thought that Warner Brothers invented the prankster animal pursued by ineffectual hunters meme, take a look at this misericord from St. Beverly Minister and be set right:

Tricky anthropomorphic animals, they’ve been around a lot longer than Bugs and Daffy.*  Monkeys, of course, are the most common mischievous non-humans, followed closely by foxes like Reynard.

One final note.  A couple of people have contacted me recently to let me know, in a generally friendly fashion, that the figures I’m calling monkeys are actually apes.  And you’re right, mostly, and usually it’s because I just think monkey is a funnier word than ape.  Though for many a medieval artist, monkeys and apes are pretty much interchangeable.  But not all.  Witness this image from Morgan Library MS M 167:

An ape and a monkey in the same margin at the same time! What more could you ask of me?**

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*And the “why I oughta…” fist-shake is clearly pretty old, too, if that’s the correct reading of the dude on the right’s upraised hand.
**Aside from timely updates, I mean.

Well, well, what do you know, we’re rolling into the penultimate month of medieval saints.  Only June and July left and we’ll have the full set.  What should next year’s monthly post theme be?*  We’ve already done monthly chores and now saints.  Must think more on this.

June 5 is reserved for the Feast of St. Boniface, missionary to the Franks and Frisians.  Though an ecclesiastical administrator of great importance, Boniface was nonetheless no mere pencil-pushing clerk; in fact, he defeated the mighty Thor, lion of Asgard, in one-on-one combat!

Well… a one-on-one pray-off, anyway.  When coming to a holy oak tree dedicated to a certain avenging god of thunder**, Boniface dared Thor to strike him down if he felled it.  Felling happened, Boniface went un-downstruck, and the Frisians were converted.  According to one version of the story, Boniface went on to trash talk the defeated Thor, asking the assembled crowd, “How stands your mighty God now, bitches?”**** For his role in their conversion, he’s now the patron Saint of Germany, and because Germans like their beer, he’s also the patron of brewers.

St. Edmund Rich, really shouldn’t be on my calendar for June, but lookie lookie, there he is, sandwiched between Boniface and Barnabus.  Usually this English saint, famous for preaching the Sixth Crusade in England and for being so holy that he slept standing up, has his feast in November.  It’s possible his feast originally fell in June and was later moved, but he’s not an important enough saint that anyone cares enough to note it.

Since I just had you look up at the calendar image, you no doubt noticed the saint to Edmund’s right who looks like he’s holding a hotdog on a stick.  That’s supposed to be a pilgrim’s staff held by St. Barnabus, whose feast arrives on June 11.  St. Barney is a New Testament saint, so it’s probably best that I not make too many jokes about him, so instead I’ll just note that you can pray to him to ward off hailstorms.

The English bias of my calendar reveals itself once more as it notes that June 15 marks the Feast of St. Eadburga, a minor royal saint, the daughter of King Edward the Elder of England and later aunt of King Edgar the Peaceable.  Nevertheless, she was quite popular in England through the fourteenth century or so, likely due to the success of her Vita, written by Osbert de Clare, who also wrote a well-received life of the far more famous saint, Edward the Confessor.  Let this be a lesson to those of you considering sainthood as a postmortem career.  Be sure to sign a book deal early with a best-selling saintly biographer.

June 17 brings us to The Feast of St. Botulph, yet another minor English saint, this one a seventh-century abbot who is a patron saint for travelers and farmers.  Bostonians have special reason to venerate him, however, as it’s a corruption of his name that gives their city its name.  St. Botolph founded a monastery that people referred to as Botolph’s Town, which got shortened to Botolphston, which got shortened to Boston.  I know it sounds like I just made that up, but for real, that’s the etymology of Boston.*****

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*Aside from more timely, I mean.
**A certain “I say thee nay”-saying god coming to theaters in 2011!***
***Or his dad.  Or some unnamed god.  There are a lot of versions of every medieval story, and I pick them on a strict most awesomeness policy.
****So I took a few liberties with the translation, sure, but the sentiment is there.
*****Also, Washington comes from St. Washingolph.  Again, totally serious.*****
******Or am I…?*******
*******I am.  Totally.