Medium Aevum

Oh, I had no idea it was time for a new take on the Arthurian legends, but it actually always is! I thoroughly enjoyed the pilot, although the reactions were quite mixed if not outright negative (am I missing smthng?)

The approach is fresh in every sense, cinematography and set design are amazing. Music, script, cast, you name it.

Well... MediumAevum is back on your dashboards after exactly FIVE years! A lot has happened in that time, but the only constant is how much I missed my followers/friends, curating content for you, following fandoms and tumblr humor. I can't wait to get back in the saddle! I'd love to see how many of you remember following MAe, what you miss, and what would you love to see?

The illuminated sketchbook of Stephan Schriber is a series of pages dating from 1494 in which "ideas and layouts for illuminated manuscripts were tried out and skills developed" by the author, a monk in the southwest of Germany. 

Detail from one of the pages in Ars Moriendi, a 15th century manuscript made in France.

Translated The Art of Dying, it consisted of a pair of Latin texts offering “advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death, explaining how to "die well” according to Christian precepts of the late Middle Ages.“

Anglo-Saxon glass drinking-horn, VII c. Excavated in Rainham, London

Drinking horns are attested from Viking Age Scandinavia. In the Prose Edda, Thor drank from a horn that unbeknown to him contained all the seas. They also feature in Beowulf, and fittings for drinking horns were also found at the Sutton Hoo burial site. Carved horns are mentioned in Guðrúnarkviða II, a poem composed about 1000 AD and preserved in the Poetic Edda:

Francesco Petrarch, accompanied by his brother Gherardo, made an ascent of 6,263-foot (1,912-meters) Mont Ventoux on April 26 in 1336, a towering rounded mountain that overlooks the Provence region of southern France.

You may have heard about "dos-à-dos" (back to back) book bindings that make one book turn into two, but this is mind blowing!

A 16th-century book that contains no fewer than six different books in a single binding. They are all devotional texts printed in Germany during the 1550s and 1570s (including Martin Luther, Der kleine Catechismus) and each one is closed with its own tiny clasp.

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This is such exquisite craftsmanship. Even not considering the clasps and folds, it’s just so breathtaking. You can view it in more detail on the National Library of Sweden’s Flicker stream.

King Richard III was born on this day in 1452. 

- 4th Dude of Devonshire