Medieval Bodies: Life and Death in the Middle Ages , by Jack Hartnell, uses the body as a narrative shape to fill up with all sorts of historic details. It’s my favorite type of read, and on my Kindle, I can quickly look up even more information.

For example, in a chapter on bones, Mr Hartnell writes about the tympanum of the Last Judgement at the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques, France. He gives a photo, but I wanted more detail, so Googled it and found a hi-res image…..and this:

“Particularly interesting are carvings of the "curieux" (the curious ones), forerunners of the World War II-era cartoon image known as Kilroy, who peek over the edges of the tympanum. The tympanum was inspired by illuminated manuscripts and would have been fully colored, small traces of the color survive today”. on Wikipedia.

“Curieux?” Really? Never heard of it, but ….

I’ve drawn a red circle on the top photo, showing the location, but it looks like there are several of these peeking out from the edge. If the tympanum was inspired by medieval manuscripts, this fellow was inspired by the marginalia.

Then we have two tombs. The first is of John the Fearless, supported by small carved alabaster mourners:

At some point the tomb was being repaired, & the mourners traveled to some museums :

The second is the tomb of Alice Chaucer, which has 2 carved bodies - one on top and one hidden at the bottom:

You’d have to kneel down to see the second one:

Mr. Hartnell mentions Mondino dei Liuzzi, who wrote a Medieval book on dissection…..

..…titled Anathomia Corporis Humani, which was the inspiration for one of my tablets:

In the chapter on skin, Hartnell discusses parchment. We think of parchment as ancient - medieval - but the United kingdom was recording their laws on parchment until 2017:

This little bead (Below) has a kissing couple on one side, and a skeleton on the other (the banner held by the skeleton reads “recognise in me what you will soon be”). I couldn’t find another image of this ivory bead anywhere, so I used my phone to take a photo of the image on my Kindle:

The chapter on hands is great. There’s the Guidonian hands “ a medieval mnemonic device designed to assist singers sight-sing (the sung realization of prima vista, or sight-reading). Their development is generally credited to an 11th centruy Italian music theorist named Guido of Arezzo, though the graphic use of the hand as a musical guide long predates the development of his technique” More at https://blogthehum.com/2016/04/13/sight-makes-sound-the-wonder-of-guidonian-hands/

But then he writes about the Venerable Bede and his numerating digits. Bede developed a ”highly elaborate system of finger-counting and gestural sign-language for representing numbers and facilitating conceptual reasoning” I don’t pretend to understand how this worked, but you can read a full explanation at https://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/talk-to-the-hand-finger-counting-and-hand-diagrams-in-the-middle-ages/

https://www.bl.uk/medieval-english-french-manuscripts/articles/medieval-science-and-mathematics gives us this llustration of hands labelled with figures on the fingers to calculate the date of Easter and perform mathematical calculations :

more hand calculations…..

That’s all for now. More neext week!