Erik Kwakkel

Medieval selfies and the earliest selfie-stick

Selfies are by no means an exclusively modern phenomenon. During the Middle Ages artists would portray themselves, even realistically. The person seen here made two selfies of himself and even tells us his name: “Rufillus”, Latin for The Redheaded. In the top image he is using a stick to support his arm so as to make a better picture. I like to think it is the earliest example of a selfie-stick!

Read more about these images in this blog post: https://medievalbooks.nl/2018/09/20/me-myself-and-i/

Eating a book

These three objects can hardly be called books. Yet they are, although they are not what you’d expect from such objects. These so-called “hornbooks” were used to teach children to read, roughly from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. To this end they presented some “light” reading, such as the alphabet, the Lord’s Prayer and other short texts. Some of these hornbooks were particularly clever. The one in the middle, dating from the eighteenth century, features an abacus and supports simple calculations. The one at the bottom, also the eighteenth century, is a particularly delicious specimen: the wooden slab could be used to bake a gingerbread. It is the ultimate “book” to get children to do their schoolwork: when you’ve shown to be able to read a word, you can bite it off and eat it.

Snippets in Stone

Here are two unusual stone fragments. The object at the top is an “ostrakon”, a piece of stone or pottery filled with text, in this case from Byzantine Egypt, dating from c. 600. While the fragment seems to be part of something that was initially much bigger (a sizable pot filled with a long biblical text, perhaps), it was actually always meant to be like this: a snippet with only a few words. The object was filled with text after it had become a fragment, as can be seen from the words written on its side. It is the equivalent of a page from a notebook. The second image, from 1280 BCE, has an even stronger draft connotation. This piece of stone was likely a teaching tool used by a master who showed his apprentice how to draw a face. The pupil subsequently tried out a pair of arms, which look clumsy - lots to learn here. Both items deceive us: they seem broken and insignificant, yet are complete and full of history.

Old sand

Today I looked at a handwritten account book from 1717. It listed a series of expenses paid by the city of Leiden (the Dutch city where I live) to various suppliers - of books, papers, pens. Being a medieval book historian, any source made after 1500 is alien. Because I am used to handling parchment books, it was odd to handle a book that was made out of paper - and a lot of it, for that matter (Pic 1). Also new to me was the fact that related materials were held together by needles (Pic 2) and to see dozens of rare actual receipts, small slips that were crossed out when paid (Pic 3). The biggest surprise, however, was the material that came falling out of the account book: sand (Pic 4). It turns out that this sand was used to dry the wet ink at the time. It was sensational to see a modest mountain of sand, put on the sheets by individuals long gone, appear from the pages as I flipped through them.

Medieval book transport

You are looking at two ‘wraps' (top), the outside and inside of a box (middle), and a leather satchel (bottom). What they share is not just their old age (they are all medieval), but also the purpose for which they were made: to transport a book from A to B. The actual reason for transporting books in these objects varied considerably. The wraps are late-medieval girdle books, which were hanged from the owner's belt by the knot. The text inside - which was often of legal or religious nature - could be consulted quickly and easily: just unwrap it and read. The box (and the ninth-century book inside) had a more exotic use: the package functioned as a charm for good luck on the battlefield, where it was carried in front of the troops by a monk. The satchel, which also dates from the ninth century, was just a bag to transport a book while on the go - it was popular among monks. Read more about these fascinating devices in my blog post “Medieval Books on the Go” (here).  

Pretty degree

You would think this pretty document, dating from 1551, is a charter issued by a duke or a royal court. However, it is a university diploma from the University of Aix. It was handed out by the chancellor to a student (a monk). How times have changed: it is a giant leap from this colourful piece of parchment to the printed piece of paper handed out by universities today.

700-year-old English speech bubbles

If you thought comics were a modern invention, think again! The top image of c. 1300 shows a drawing that has the ingredients of a modern comic book drawing, including the fact that the text is placed in real speech bubbles: the words (which are in English!) are connected to the speaker’s mouth by means of a tiny line. It turns out this tradition was alive and kicking in medieval times. Read more about these 700-year-old speech bubbles - including what the funny English text says - in this longer blog I posted.

Perfect book

This is the perfect medieval book: it is on purple parchment, written in golden letters, and illuminated with great images. To top it, the book is fitted in an original bookbox, very few of which survive. What more could a book lover want?

Books as hardware

These odd-looking medieval books share one peculiarity: they were all made into interactive objects because actual turning discs were attached to the page, usually more than one. The makers of these manuscripts added them to calculate the position of sun and moon (Pic 1), the date of Easter (not shown), or make other calculations (Pic 3). Particularly intriguing is the set of cogwheels embedded in the bookbinding (Pic 2), which picked a random number used for a method of divination. More about these unusual books and their function in this post on my other blog, medievalbooks.nl.

Party time

The first and last text line on the medieval page was a place to party. Almost the entire page the scribe had to confine himself to narrow horizontal tracks on which the lines of text were written: no room to manouvre or sidestep seriousness. Then, finally, a new page started, which meant lots of room in the upper margin: swirly lines shooting out of the top line underscore the liberation that was felt after so much confinement (Pics 2, 5, 6). Then more confinement, line after line, a page full. Until, finally, the last line on the page arrived and with it another opportunity for frivolness and fun, this time in the lower margin (Pics 1, 3, 4). You have to feel sorry for the poor scribe, being tossed back and forth between flamboyance and moderation.

Serious fun

You have seen your share of funny images from medieval times in this blog. When you browse books before print, either in online databases or for real, you are bound to encounter one sooner or later, either in the margins or attached to a capital letter. This particular manuscript, however, is fun all over. The decorator doodled a grumpy courtier and his jester in the lower margin (Pic 1), attached a face sticking out his tongue to a large letter (Pic 2), and placed a heart pierced by an arrow inside an initial (Pic 3). The most striking thing of all? The book in question was dead serious: it concerns a so-called Antiphonary, a book used by a choir in the church to sing from during the Holy Mass. Just today I encountered another one of these lovely contrasts (I tweeted it here). Apparently, doing a serious thing with a smile on your face was not uncommon in medieval times.

Zoink!

Usually medieval illustrations look quite different from those in modern comic books. This one, however, breaks with that rule: it is almost 600 years old, yet it looks like it was drawn yesterday. It shows a stereotypical comic book expression, of a pseudo-offended person. The spiky hairdo adds to the eerily-modern look of this funny face. Zoink!

Blue dot

You have to be really careful as a medieval decorator. In the Middle Ages the sequence of making a book was as follows: first the scribe copied the text, painstakingly, sweating over a single parchment page for up to half a day; and then the decorator would add color. This meant, of course, that the brush of the latter artist was hovering over a completed page. These images show what could go wrong if gravity got the upper hand in this balancing act: a drop of blue paint fell from the brush onto the parchment page. The decorator must not have seen it, because the thick drop was allowed to dry and travel through time: the 700-years-old human error is now a pretty sight.