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Posts tagged with medieval

Violent death in thousand shapes displayed

image of a Medieval map of London with Latin writing and pushpin icons marking the recorded deaths

paduasoy has posted the London Medieval Murder Map to scratch your 14th-century murders-most-foul demographics itch

07/08/23
by taz

Slow Fashion

Dancing Peasants, late 1400’s, via postej-stew.dk: medieval painting of a group of men and women outside, dancing, dressed mainly in red, blue, and white simple outfits, probably for a feast / celebration

In Ask Metafilter, iamsuper asks, How unfashionable were the medieval poor? "How fast did fashion spread in, say, medieval times, or Tudor times? Would people living in remote areas perhaps be wearing clothes that were 100 years or more out of fashion? Or would fashions evolve at similar speeds to today?"

04/23/23
by taz

Biographies of early medieval English women

Fifteenth-century Dutch panel painting of Count Baldwin and Queen JudithJudith: The First Crowned and Anointed Queen of Wessex... At Twelve Years Old

My aim with my newsletter is to eventually have written a biography of every single woman we know existed in England between roughly 500 and 1100: Wobbuffet posts historian Florence H R Scott's excellent and accessible "Ælfgif-who?" collection, with links to each entry so far.

06/15/21
by taz

Minor Medieval Maladies, M'dear

13th century anatomical illustration

What happened when someone in the Middle Ages got pink eye, or someone in Elizabethan England got athlete's foot or crotch rot? Did the infections just hang around forever? Was everyone just infected with this type of stuff? (It's pretty well-known that basically everyone had lice and fleas, I believe.)

In Ask Me: Minor infections in the days before anti-biotics or anti-fungals? Many good answers, and Jane the Brown brings the serious history again.

12/08/15
by taz

Navel Grazing

FGR: BellyFGR: Belly by bloody marty mix (cc by-nc-nd)

The oldest use of the f-word has been discovered, dating the word some 165 years earlier that had ever been seen. It appeared in the name "Roger Fuckebythenavele"

and in the dream-jobs-you-never-knew-you'd-kill-to-have department, litlnemo offers, "I teach a class on dirty surnames (yes, really) and this one so has to go into my list. Those medieval English people were not the most delicate of speech, let's just put it that way."

In other deep thoughts on names and other things, MCMikeNamara asks, Has Axl Rose ever commented on the fact that his stage name is an anagram for "oral sex"?

09/12/15
by taz

Medieval Martha Stewart?

medieval beekeepermedieval beekeeper by hans s (cc by-nd)

Another thing to consider is how dark homes were in the Medieval period. There was not a lot of window glass. Homes were often very smokey and the various sources of light were inadequate. Clutter seems to have become prevalent during the late Georgian/early Victorian era as the lighting improved and manufacturing made extraneous possessions affordable. Until then you did a lot of groping around in the dark. Kitchens were often not part of the main house, as were workshops, weaving galleries and cloisters, places where work could be done outside where there was sufficient light to do it. This probably discouraged them from having a whole lot of stuff on display inside.

Jane the Brown offers a great overview of possibilities, conditions and practicalities surrounding xarnop's question, "Are there any surviving evidence of household decorations from medieval times in Europe?"

07/05/15
by taz

Winter Was Coming

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