Abbess Hilde

Man writing

Decorated initial D with interlace and a mermaid, from Psalm 14 (folio 13v) 8th century. The Psalter of Charlemagne (shelfmark BN lat. 13159) She pulls her hair, and has a very long body that ends in two tails.

I found her when I was looking for the book La sirène dans la pensée et dans l'art de l'Antiquité et du Moyen Âge by Jacqueline Leclercq-Marx, which I’m still looking for. She’s interesting, as she’s a very early mermaid in a religious manuscript. Another early example of a two-tailed mermaid in a religious manuscript is from the Book of Kells:

This is a page from a Medieval glossary, a list of words followed by a synonym or an explanation of their meaning. Glossaries are the ancestors of dictionaries, the difference is that dictionaries aim to include all the words in a language, while glossaries were/are made to help students understand a specific Latin text that they studied in school, listing the difficult or outdated words from that text.

The page in this photo is the last surviving page of a glossary that was copied around the year 900 probably to be used in the Barcelona Cathedral's school. It's kept in the Diocesan Archive of Barcelona (Catalonia).

Farnham shall be hosting a fair on the day of St. Barnabas (June 11th for the laypeople who may be unaware), and of course we shall wish to display the fine work of the monastery on this day, so all the residents of the monastery are invited on this day to, if they are so inclined, display some of their work, be it embroidery, spinning, illuminations, or something else. Laypeople are of course also invited to display their work at the fair, as are travelers from outside of Farnham if they have art of a ecclastical/medieval nature!