Marginalia

Marginalia! The delightful antidote to Malleus….like this page, with a hunter and rabbit at the top, and a pair of nuns trying to smuggle a man into their convent at the bottom:

In the Middle Ages, text was handwritten on sheets of parchment. As the scribes wrote, they left spaces for illuminations -the beautiful lettering and designs. Sometimes, the illuminators or the scribes would leave little drawings on the margins: marginalia.

Before we get into the different types of marginalia, let’s just enjoy looking at some…

Lots of bunnies…sometimes violent bunnies:

and snails, sometimes doing battle…

There are even a few instances where the writers or illuminators added little self-portraits:

Despite these usually being religious texts, the marginalia was often quite raunchy:

Some of this raunchiness was appropriated by Monty Python:

In fact, it seems like a lot of Terry Gilliam's animations , and Monty Python madness, were inspired by marginalia, such as:

The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog (in Monty Python and the Holy Grail)…

…and the snail

There are also some videos with medieval inspired silliness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99d9FC168lM

https://giphy.com/gifs/monty-python-IRSFVyruakWNW

In addition to the gross and raunchy, there are plenty of marginalia that’s completely mundane, or just…odd:

The women (above) are fighting with distaffs - tools used for spinning fibers into yarn.

There’s a website that gives a great explanation of marginalia, by Hunter Oatman-Stanford: https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/naughty-nuns-flatulent-monks-and-other-surprises-of-sacred-medieval-manuscripts/ He explains it better than I do.

Next week, we’ll look at different types of marginalia, and maybe start assembling them into a tablet. Contact me at dianesavona@aol.com