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Beste Glatisante

@questingbeaste

Medieval Things and a little historical fun.
The Questing Beast, or Beste Glatisante, is from Arthurian Legend.
You can call me Jehanne.
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questingbeaste
english-history-trip
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english-history-trip
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A Break from the Lawn
A new study at King's College, Cambridge reveals the striking benefits of letting lawns go wild. But can others be persuaded to break with a
University of Cambridge|Jacqueline Garget
In 2020, for the first time since being laid in 1772, a section of a King’s College lawn the size of just half a football pitch was not mown. Instead, it was transformed into a colourful wildflower meadow filled with poppies, cornflowers and oxeye daisies.
[Researcher Dr Cicely Marshall] found that as well as being a glorious sight, the meadow had boosted biodiversity and was more resilient than lawn to our changing climate. The results are published today in the journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence. Despite its size, the wildflower meadow supported three times more species of plants, spiders and bugs than the remaining lawn - including 14 species with conservation designations, compared with six in the lawn.
The meadow was found to have another climate benefit: it reflected 25% more sunlight than the lawn, helping to counteract what’s known as the ‘urban heat island’ effect. Cities tend to heat up more than rural areas, so reflecting more sunlight can have a cooling effect - useful in our increasingly hot summers. “Cambridge has become more prone to drought, and last summer most of the College’s fine lawns died. It’s really expensive to maintain these lawns, which have to be re-sown if they die off. But the meadow just looked after itself,” says Marshall.
#old world europe#not medieval but wow#so cool
questingbeaste
kerame
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nebmia

so apparently in 815 CE there was a common belief that sky pirates sailed ships in the clouds and (working in collaberation with frankish weather wizards) stole all the crops that got damaged in storms and took them back to the cloud realm of magonia.

And this was apparently a common enough belief that an archbishop felt the need to write a treatise to debunk it and insist that only god controls the weather, which is the only reason we know about it.

there are three important points to take from this, i think

  1. This is great inspiration for your next dnd game
  2. Tropes that might seem relatively modern (like airship pirates) can often actually go WAY back
  3. The stuff your average medieval christian actually believed in will often have very little resemblance to christianity. And thats before you even get to the proper heretics. EDIT: people keep asking for the source and its now been added multiple times in different reblog chains. I should have put it in the original post but i am a fool: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/Agobard-OnHailandThunder.asp
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shinychimera

You know, the more I encounter "people believed" things like this, and the more I try to look at them without the "myth of progress" lens (of we are more sophisticated than the people of history/people of other nations) -- the more these "beliefs" look like tumblr shitposts.

I just imagine folks standing in the middle of a wrecked field, knowing half a year's work has gone to waste and the winter's going to be hard, sighing and saying, "darn you, sky pirate Goncharov, why you have to be like this?" And everyone laughs a little. And next storm someone repeats the joke, and embellishes it a bit, and so on and so on. You might tell it to your kids with a straight face but pretty much everyone's in on the joke, and I just imagine the incredulous stifled laughter in the pews when they realize the archbishop is actually taking this stupid shit seriously.

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findingfeather

The archbishop and half your neighbours who either aren’t in on the joke or - WORRYINGLY- you thought were in on the home but are now insisting it’s not a joke and you don’t feel gaslit because that terminology won’t be invented for another half millennium but if it did you would.

You know, like on tumblr/the internet.

questingbeaste
kerame
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design-is-fine

The Bibliotheca Corviniana was the second largest library of the Renaissance after the Vaticana. The Hungarian king Mathias Corvinus (1458-1490) compiled it at great expense, for which he had magnificently decorated manuscripts produced, mainly in Italy. Characteristic are the mostly splendid illuminations of the manuscripts, the leather bindings decorated with gold and the velvet and silk bindings. About 200 "corvines" are still recorded. Take a look at the beautiful works, digitalized on the website Bibliotheca Corvina. 

questingbeaste
english-history-trip
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perkwunos

I think it’d be a good idea to let people from the Middle Ages use tumblr

anti vaxxers

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mysticpandalad

look into my eyes and tell me a person from the Middle Ages who lost 3 kids by the time they are 25 and coughs up blood every now and then would be against a vial with a heaven-sent potion that can protect you from the demons that plague the Earth with just one small prick. look into my eyes and lie to me

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the-lost-alchemist

Finally I can use this.

They would love vaccines.

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english-history-trip

I mean. The early vaccines of the 18th century were people cutting your arm open and literally smearing discharge from the boils of a dying person right into the wound. And people did it, and had their children do it.

Look at the guys who the people of the 17th century would let straight-up drain their blood:

They would shy away from a little PRICK?!?

BALD’S LEECHBOOK’S PRESCRIPTION TO ALFRED THE GREAT FOR A HEADACHE WAS RUBBING GOAT SHIT ON YOUR FACE