society for creative anachronism – Page 11

Hi! Me again! :D I was wondering if you’d seen any really good 11th century Russian illumination? At April coronation, it’s one of competition categories, so I’m starting early.

No, but I can find some. I’m a librarian! 😀

(Sorry – I just did a binge-watch of all The Librarian movies to gear myself up for the TV show. Every time he announced, “I’m The Librarian,” I giggled.)

OKAY SO.

To start, how about the The Codex Assemanianus?

It was probably 10th century, but it’s still cool. You can read more about it here [link], and there are two pages of scans from it [link] [link]. Quite a few of these pages would be really easy to translate into SCA awards. I might do a few blanks myself for our current blank drive… Here are a couple of my favorites:

f. 157v

f. 10r

</p></But if we want to be firmly in the 11th Century, how about the Ostromir Gospels? These date to 1056-7. You can find more info at the National Library of Russia [link]. I’ve known scribes who have used this. That is, looking at it, I’m going “OH HEY. This is what so-and-so used!” Have a sample:

f. 2r

Lastly, there is the Arkhangelsk Gospel, also know as the Archangel Gospel, which dates to 1092, making it the fourth oldest Slavic manuscript we have. You can view the whole thing online at the Russia State Library [link].

Have fun browsing!

Have a Kindle? FREE EBOOK: Edward Plantagenet, The English Justinian

Edward Plantagenet, The English Justinian – Kindle edition by Edward Jenks. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Edward Plantagenet, The English Justinian.

Free if you have a Kindle.

Description from Publisher: Pyrrhus Press specializes in bringing books long out of date back to life, allowing today’s readers access to yesterday’s treasures. This is a concise but comprehensive biography of King Edward of the Plantagenet dynasty. From the preface:“IF ever there was a national hero, it was Edward of England. In his person, his character, his position, and his policy, are summed up the essential elements of that great English nation which came into existence during his lifetime. How far Edward was its creator, how far its creature, is a shrewd question, which each student of history must answer for himself; but I trust that this little book may help him to form a sound conclusion. Whatever be the answer, there can be little doubt, that it would be impossible to find a truer symbol of the English nation, in the days of its glorious youth, than the king whose life is sketched in the following pages.Perhaps it is necessary that I should offer a word of apology for the intrusion of a mere lawyer upon a scene so dominated by great historians. My explanation is, that I have long been unable to understand, how anyone but a lawyer can possibly appreciate the true inwardness of Edward’s reign. The Common Law which came into existence during his lifetime was, and is, the very picture of English national life, the concrete form into which the national spirit crystallises with the moving centuries.Some of Edward’s most brilliant achievements in legislation and statecraft are wholly missed by lay historians, simply because these achievements are expressed in highly technical language. If I have essayed the perilous task of striving to make technical matters clear to the general reader, as in Chapters IX. and XIII., I have done so because I have felt, that it was idle to attempt, in any other way, to bring out Edward’s real greatness. But, even with this conviction, I should hardly have ventured the task, had I not been encouraged, by those whose opinions are entitled to greater weight than my own, to hope that I might in some degree succeed in persuading my readers, that Law is a dull subject only to those who do not understand it.”

the second of the Towers I did, and my least favourite of them. again, drew it like five, six times in the course of a day and a half.

pulltheotheroneithasbellson:

A while back, I asked the scareferencedesk for any illumination references with towers they knew of, and I promised to post them after they all got handed out. Well, it is definitely not in a timely manner, but they’ve all been handed out! I added some of the other designs I’ve done so it’s not so architecture heavy. I also added the Red Tower Rapier Champion scroll which was a group project. Mistress Adela did the calligraphy then curse because she left too much space (while the rest of us are laughing at how small she wrote), and then handed it to me and told me to draw a thing in the empty space. So, yay, weird little medieval person! I totally snagged the Knight Marshal on his way past the table and was like “SWORDS. HOW DOES THE HAND GUARD THINGY EVEN.” And luckily he spoke internet at 1am because he answered what I meant. The whole scroll totally was finished five minutes before evening Court, and we’re counting it as a major victory that it was dry. And then like a week later we had to ask if Wistric would send us pictures so we could keep track of the things we made. Veronica and I are still in the track our progress through photos of all the things we make stage.

Yay! So happy to see them! 😀 Also, Combat Scribing is awesome.

What Vikings Really Looked Like

medieval-women:

frozendarknorth:

Basically this is the best article and website about Scandinavia I have stumbled across yet.

Also: Viking women were pretty awesome.

There is some interesting info here on the appearance and dress of Viking women.

mediumaevum:

Beginner and veteran transcribers, this app is available for free, on both Android and iOS devices. Manuscript database, basic info on each of them, typography galore…

The origins of this app lie in online exercises in palaeography developed for postgraduate students in the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds in West Yorkshire, U.K. The aim is to provide practice in the transcription of a wide range of medieval hands, from the twelfth to the late fifteenth century.

More

Truth be told, some of the pages might be in higher resolution, but still, it’s one of the best edu apps I’ve seen lately.

Hey, pulltheotheroneithasbellson! I found another tower! 😀

From the Beinecke Rare book and Manuscript Library’s record:

La Sfera
Creator: Dati, Gregorio, 1362-1436
Language: Italian
Date: [between 1450 and 1500]Subjects:
Astronomy, Medieval
Italian poetry–15th century
Illumination of books and manuscripts, Medieval
Manuscripts, Medieval–Connecticut–New Haven
Early maps
Navigation–Early works to 1800
Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library
Dati, Gregorio,–1362-1436

This is folio 17r.

libralthinking:

beatonna:

So the University of Iowa Libraries has this DIY thing for the historian in all of us – transcribing old texts and handwritten letters for the public record. It’s a group effort, and the sort of nitty gritty thing you’d get to do if you actually used your history degree for a thing related to it.

KATE BEATON + DIY HISTORY?!?

So, this is a thing. 🙂

English Heritage Archaeological Monographs – FREE

mediumaevum:

English Heritage has a long tradition of producing highly illustrated archaeological monographs about key sites and topics of importance to the understanding of the historic environment in England. Many of the past titles have long been out of print… As a service to the wider archaeological community, English Heritage is now making these titles available as ebooks, available from their website, and as PDFs which can be accessed from the ADS for free.

Look! This is so amazing!

Ask your question, get an answer!

You know that research you’re doing?

You should ask me about it. 😀

The WayBack Machine and Curing your Defunct Website Woes

It’s happened to you. It’s happened to all of us.

You’re chugging along doing your research, and you see a site that looks promising. Best of all, it’s by another Scadian. You gasp with joy and excitement! Someone else is interested in the Weird Thing You’re Researching and has already done some of the legwork! And sometimes, what you’re looking at is an image – in a search engine, Pinterest, or some other place – that is spot-on the kind of thing you’re looking for.

Eagerly, with much anticipation, you click the link.

But then your hopes are broken when the site is either not there, broken, or otherwise doesn’t live up to your expectations of Glorious Research Breakthrough.

It probably did, at some point. But we Scadians are really bad about webpage upkeep, it seems.

Feel better, my fellow Catalog Crawlers. For I have a tool for you. It carries a +5 to Research bonus to boot!

Introducing – the WayBack Machine.

Enter a web address, and you can see a timeline of when it was last archived – and more often than not, you have some choices.

Case in point: The Purple Lotus and Leah’s Attempts to Research Sasanian Persia.

I found a series of delicious, delicious pins of metal plates depicting women in the Sasanian period. But when I clicked on them, they took me to a site that had information, but no pictures. Pictures mean context! It was clear to me that the author was changing her website around, and the HTML that pointed to the images was broken. I didn’t lose faith though! I waited a bit to see if she was in the middle of fixing it, but after a few weeks, I went to the WayBack Machine.

Not only is thepurplelotus.org archived, but it has been archived several times. The earliest snapshot had a PDF of the information I wanted, but it wouldn’t load – but I wasn’t surprised. A snapshot from 2011 had what I wanted – the article, plus images. One print-dialog later, where I chose to save the “print” as a PDF instead of sending it to the printer, and I’m home free.

So take heart, my Delvers of Dusty Dissertations! The WayBack Machine will resurrect that old dead website (most of the time) and get you the information you seek!