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![]() The mead is flowing.Īnd then the cat comes in, settles down on the middle of the floor and proceeds to do this. The troubadour is singing like his life depends on it (and it could). Marginalia could reflect, mirror, or expand the main illustration of a text page, as has been the case for some works, such as the late-fourteenth-century allegorical poem the Romance of the Rose (Waters 1992). In medieval illuminated manuscripts figurative marginalia provide a rich terrain of artistic expression, with distinctive characteristics according to period, locus of production, and school or scriptorium. Let’s take a tour of all the feline marginalia mayhem, shall we? Always Inappropriate Marginalia are illustrations or notations in the margins of manuscripts. Most of these lovable assholes are found in the margins and designs of Medieval and early Renaissance manuscripts. Illustrations in manuscripts Pictorial marginalia exists in a large variety of styles. Long before gave us the gift of endless cat memes, Medieval cats were movers and shakers, behaving inappropriately, seizing power, and literally leaving their mark on history. This essay aims at investigating the roles and meaning of pictures in the marginalia of medieval manuscripts, and I will try to reach some conclusions through looking at examples from some European manuscripts of mainly the high and late Middle Ages. ![]() (Bkwillwm / Public Domain ) Lastly, it may be mentioned that drolleries were but one of the many types of marginalia that were made by Medieval manuscript makers. Just a note for my more sensitive readers: The language in this post is a bit stronger than you’re used to fining on Random Bits, so if that will trouble you, you may want to jump down a different Research Rabbit Hole or check out some writerly cats here. Doodles were a type of drollery in Medieval manuscripts. I’d argue we can find them in medieval tomes if we look hard enough (like in the margins) And that’s where Cait is taking us today, with an hilarious tour finding the cats in medieval manuscripts. 16th book of 'The Morals of Job Gregory the Great' (Arnstein, Germany, 12th century). They have been around a lot longer than you’d imagine. Text from a medieval manuscript showing an enlarged, decorated initial with figures of a dog biting a cat that catches mice with its mouth and claws. Though I write historical fiction that reflects the attitudes and understandings of the times, human beings are still pretty much the same then as they are now. I’ve heard it said that the more thing change, the more they stay the same, and I’m pretty convinced it’s true. Speed was also a motivation: the paste-over allowed the book to keep pace with events in a manner faster than making a whole new book.I’d like to welcome my friend Cait Reynolds today as she takes us along for a trip down the research rabbit hole finding cats in the margins. The motivations for issuing this new article were clearly political (expunge Beria!) and economic (do it cheaply!). Rather than reprint the entire encyclopedia, which would have cost time and resources, the Soviets instead found a cheaper solution: to write an addendum page-an extended article about the Bering Strait-and then send it to all registered owners of the volumes, with instructions that they should paste the new page over the Beria article, thereby obfuscating it. ![]() This meant that the article had to be amended. ![]() The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, issued since 1926, had a positive article on Beria that was now an embarrassment. Stalin had just died, and Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, the chief of Stalin’s secret police, had fallen out of favor. In response to an event in the Soviet Union in 1953 George Orwell wrote, “He who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future.” He was referring to an incident that involved a strategic adjustment to a book.
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