Greetings Investors,

I am pleased to report that Got Medieval Enterprises posted a record profit this year, due in no small part to our lack of records for years previous.  Nevertheless, if we extrapolate this year’s growth forward, by this time next year I fully expect to be writing my yearly report from an exotic foreign resort where my every need is attended by serving staff as professional as they are well-endowed.  Coconut shell bikini tops and grass skirts may factor in, but this will depend upon larger trends in the world economy.  There will, of course, be a paper umbrella in my drink, unless a prolonged recession sets in, in which case I will settle for a plastic novelty cup of some sort.  Perhaps a volcano.

GME’s strong performance over the past year rests primarily its dominance, as always, of the monkey and poop markets.  By synergizing these two traditional areas of strength we were able to leverage our way into the far more lucrative monkey-poop market.  Thus, the best-selling item in our CafePress store for fiscal 2008 was the Monkey and the Bishop Magnet, surpassing even the Drunk Monkeys upon which our great business was founded so long ago.

I would not suggest we abandon our traditional core product line in favor of this year’s darling, however.  Data from the end of the year suggests that as the American credit market continues to experience uncertainty people will become less interested in such scatological fare.  This is evidenced, or so the boys in marketing keep telling me, by the surprising success of our Angelic Magnet.  

Hastily thrown together one night by our VP in charge of procrastination and dropped on the CafePress store with no ad support, this magnet sold nearly as well as the drunken monkeys, representing the number three seller overall.  If the monkey labor union should ever get off the ground–and under an Obama presidency, this is a serious concern–we may have to look into expanding our angelic offerings.  Angels, as you all are no doubt well aware, work for scale to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest with their traditional employer’s stock portfolio.

In conclusion, GME should weather the coming uncertainty well, so long as we retain our commitment to our core product areas while simultaneously prioritizing new development.  It has been my great honor to shepherd GME through 2008, and I predict nothing but success in the year ahead.

Yours,
C.S. Pyrdum
The Guy What Has the Blog
Got Medieval

This week’s marginal image comes from Bodleian Library MS Douce 62, a late fourteenth century Italian book of hours:

As you can see, it’s a naked lady* talking to a monkish grotesque.  I rather doubt there’s anything theologically significant about it, but I imagine their conversation goes a little something like this:

MONK: …and then then they made me their chief.
NAKED LADY: Yes, yes, a very witty story, and I’m certainly glad I heard it from the beginning rather than being teased with just the ending, but I can’t help asking if that is a second head growing out of your… well, out of your whatever is going on down there.
MONK: It might be, or I might just be glad to see you.
NAKED LADY: Ah.  Yes.  I see.  Is that a monk growing out of your crotch, or are you just glad to see me? Is that it?
MONK: Don’t be silly.  He’s never taken holy orders.  

An odd way to close out Mmm… Marginalia for 2008, I’ll admit, but all the medieval-porn-seeking Googlers will be happy.  I may have finally delivered.

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*And though the illuminator made a general mess of her head, he was fairly attentive to the anatomical detail elsewhere on the naked lady, as you can see if you click to expand the image.

I’ve resolved to try to keep Mmm… Marginalia shorter and sweeter* in the New Year, so here’s a little something from a manuscript I’ve looked at before, the Pierpont Morgan Library’s MS G24 (a mid-14th century French collection of 13th-century verse romances), that requires little explanation:

Today is a day for linking, apparently.  Via Boingboing, I came across the “Periodic Table of Awesoments“, a listing of the fundamental components of awesomeness.  The table confirms what several commenters here have said: Trebuchets are awesome.  Fundamentally awesome, it would appear.

Sadly, little else medieval made the awesoment cut, unless ninjas count. Perhaps medievalia tends to arise primarily in compounds. Or is that awesomounds?

At Penny Arcade yesterday, this gem, about medieval man about town Dante Alighieri:

Silly webcomiteers, the sequel to Inferno is the Purgatorio. Now, while I’m linking web humor, read this take on end-of-semester evaluations from Something Awful.

Christmas is swiftly approaching, so this week’s edition of Mmm… Marginalia presents two sets of three kings, with some extra shepherds abiding in their fields just because I’m nice.  The first is found in a 13th-century Flemish manuscript now held by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, where it adorns the bottom margin:

Just to be clear, the king on the far left is shielding his eyes against the brilliance of the star, not holding his nose.  

Now, if we zoom out a bit, we can see the star that so blinds him, as well the aforepromised shepherds.  

The star is positioned so that it’s almost the period to the sentence beginning Verbum caro factum est… or “The Word was made Flesh,” referring to that certain manger-dweller that some people today chidingly remind other people* is “the reason for the season.”  Medieval Christians were, of course, quite clear that they were celebrating the birth of Christ, the Word, and the anniversary of his Incarnation, and lots of other things that required capital letters when you write them out.  The dude with the red suit just didn’t factor into it.  But this does not mean that medieval folk were always as stodgy and solemn about this time of year as the people who mutter about wars on Christmas might have you believe.  I am almost certain that if tacky icicle lights had been invented, the medievals would have tacked them all over the cathedrals for their Christmas masses. 

In other words, just because something was sacred doesn’t mean that people in the Middle Ages couldn’t have fun with it.  This brings me to the second set of three kings, these found in the lower margin of  Shcaffhausen Stadtbibliothek MS Gen. 8, a fourteenth-century copy of the “Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk,” a German vernacular Bible:

I had originally intended to discuss the way that the artist depicts the passage of time by showing each of the three kings at a different point in the journey*–but then I took a closer look at Joseph on the far right, who’s just a lot more fun:  

This is a Joseph we moderns almost never see, one who looks pretty dubious about the story he finds himself written into, the look on his face as he stares down at his adopted holy son sort of a cross between “well I’ll be damned” and “now what am I supposed to do?”  Here’s a closeup:

You can’t help but feel for the guy.  He’s old enough to have to walk with a cane (for Chrissake) and now he’s expected to change the diapers of this glowing-headed baby.

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*These people being “preachers on the radio” and “me” respectively.  Macon has apparently limitless reserves of Christian radio programming and no good alternative stations.
**Because I grow increasingly dull in my old age.

A reader tipped me off to this bizarre paragraph in an article in last month’s New York Times called “England’s Culinary Wild West“:

Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstall hasn’t gone so far as to use blood as a flooring ingredient, but almost nothing goes to waste. In the kitchen, sheep’s intestines are soaking in cold water for making sausage, and the fridge is a Chaucerian chamber of innards.

Attention, media. I’m willing to cut you a little slack on the word “medieval” if you keep your grubby little hands off Mr. Geoffrey Chaucer. And don’t tell me you needed him for the alliteration. Dude was a poet and a pencil pusher for the Plantagenets, not some battle-axe brandishing barbarian. He’s no byword for brutality, that’s all I’m saying.

Unless, perhaps, you meant to indicate that Chaucer was overly fond of sausage–then we’d be cool. Chaucer loved a good fat joke at his expense.

For anyone wanting a medieval marginal monkey to put under the Christmas tree or into one of those socks you put by the fireplace, you’d best step to it if you want it to arrive before the fat man is on the roof.