Ask a Medievalist

Summary Ever see an Indiana Jones movie? For more on relic theft, see Patrick J. Geary’s Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages. Annotations and Corrections 1/ The episode where we talked about St. Nicholas was episode 23 (a Christmas episode). The oil is kind of said to be myrrh, but it’s not… but it is a weird thing. For more on this phenomenon (not reserved for St Nicholas—there are other saints who are myroblytes), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myroblyte_saint 2/ Great fictional versions of the Grail lore: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and I will add the short story “Chivalry” by Neil Gaiman. 3/ The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. I recommend the Diana Burgin and Katerine Tiernan O’Connor translation (1996), but apparently there have been some more recent ones that are also good. 4/ There are a lot of places with magical springs; I think I was thinking of Lourdes. You can apparently buy Lourdes water online for $6.99 and have it shipped directly to your house. 5/ We talked about the eucharist in episode…a lot of them. [The search engine on the website will find them all!–Jesse] 6/ It’s good to be the king. [Thank you Mel Brooks!–Jesse] 7/ From Maria Headley’s translation of Beowulf (since I have become her acolyte), lines 26–51 (with a few omitted here because typing them is tedious): Scyld was iron until the end. When he died, his warriors executed his final orders. They swaddled their king of rings and did just as the Dane had demanded, back when mind and meter could merge in his mouth. They bore him to the harbor, and into the bosom of a ship, that father they’d followed, that man they’d adored. […] They laid him by the mast, packed tight in his treasure-trove, bright swords, war-weeds, his lap holding a hoard of flood-tithes, each fare-coin placed by a loyal man. He who pays the piper calls the tune. His shroud shone, ringed in runes, sun-stitched. I’ve never heard of any ship so heavy, nor corpse so rich. […] No man knows, not me, not you, who hauled Scyld’s hoard to shore, but the poor are plentiful, and somebody got lucky. 8/ Some of the Greek heroes mentioned: Herakles, aka Hercules: you know him, there was a Disney movie about him. Asclepius: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepius You know that medical symbol that looks like a caduceus but only has one snake? That’s the rod of Asclepius. That’s this guy. Son of Apollo + someone. [His mom’s identity–or even if he has a mom–is dependent on the myth.–Jesse] Orestes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orestes son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, brother of Electra. Eventually kills his mother and her boyfriend, Aegisthus. [And gets chased by the Furies!–Jesse] Pelops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelops king of Pisa (in myth); his father was Tantalus, who you might also remember from Greek myth. 9/ Oedipus at Colonus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_at_Colonus 10/ The Oedipus Rex song, by Tom Lehrer. 11/ In what is arguably the best scene in any bible ever, Elisha summons the bears in 2 Kings 2:23–24. The story of a guy who touched him rising from the grave is 2 Kings 13:20–21. 12/ The big black cube is the kaaba, which means “cube.” It’s a building. You can go inside it, although it’s kept closed during hajj. (I mean, maybe you can if you’re Muslim. They don’t allow non-Muslims in Mecca.) The connection with Abraham is that he and Ishmael repaired it. [Isaac is the favored son of Judaism and Christianity, and Ishmael is the favored son in Islam.–Jesse ] Topkapi Palace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topkap%C4%B1_Palace (Scroll down to the Privy Chamber for the sacred relics.) Abraham’s pot: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/abrahams-pot-is-displayed-at-topkapi-palace-on-july-03-2018-news-photo/991960532 Joseph’s Turban: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/josephs-turban-amongst-sacred-trusts-is-displayed-at-news-photo/991960876 Muhammad’s swords and bow: https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/prophet-muhammads-swords-and-bow-are-displayed-in-their-news-photo/991960842 13/ Muhammed lived 570–632. Solidly early medieval. 14/ The Wailing Wall, also known as the Western Wall, is a wall in Jerusalem that was once a retaining wall for the Second Jewish Temple. We’ve sort of alluded to before (in…discussions of Jesus, actually) that Jews used to have a big temple where all the ritual stuff went down, and after the Romans expelled all the Jews from that general area (the diaspora) and destroyed the temple (70 CE, not 76 like Em suggests), Judaism evolved into the rabbinical religion we know today. But Jews like to go back there and…cry, I guess. Also, the wall is known in Arabic as al-Buraq, after the legend that this is where Muhammed tied his winged steed before he ascended

Synopsis The last of the major proto-protestant heresies we’re going to examine is the Hussites, who were led by Jan Hus. And then we’re going to quick talk about the man, the myth, the machine, Martin Luther. The first rule of Medieval Studies is “Don’t talk about Luther.” [Also the second and third rules.–Jesse] But we’re doing it today. Annotations and Corrections 1/ Monastic orders and asceticism: see episode 5 on Hermits and Anchoresses and episode 49 notes 9, 10, and 11. 2/ I believe we’ve mentioned this before, but Catholic priests weren’t always expected to be celibate. 3/ Okay, it looks like “Henry VIII founded his own church so he could get divorced” is not one hundred percent of the story and there was some complicated stuff going on. But that was well into the not-Middle-Ages-anymore time, so you’ll have to find one of the other four million books on this. 4/ For more on Falstaff, Oldcastle, and Fastolf, see episode 49 note 20. The Avignon Papacy: 1309–1376. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy Generally speaking Bohemia didn’t have a sea coast, which is how you know that A Winter’s Tale is a fairy tale (although Shakespeare’s source is also the source for the sea coast). 5/ Richard II (1367–1400). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_II_of_England As Jesse says, his second wife, Isabella of Valois, was six when they married and nine when he died. Eventually she married her cousin Charles, Duke of Orleans, and then died in childbirth at age 19. Richard II is a really beautiful play and you should read it. [Yes!!-–Jesse] 6/ The Hussites! Jan Hus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hus 7/ The second Vatican council (aka Vatican II) was 1962–1965. They still do masses in Latin in Rome. (I think Dr. Jesse and I attended one once.) [Yes!! So cool!!–Jesse] [Our Flag Means Death is THE BEST. Let’s have some ecclesiastical Latin in season 2!–Jesse] Greek is the worst. Sorry, Greek. Sorry, Dr. Jesse who is actually in Greece as I edit this. [I mean, Greek did give us theatre and history and philosophy, just for starters. Interestingly, some schools are rethinking that second semester Greek class precisely because not everyone wants to be a linguist. Some people want to be historians or philosophers but also want to be able to read that stuff in the original Greek.–Jesse] About Classical Sanskrit: Just don’t. (Good on me to choose an example word, “woman”, that is NOT Greek at its root…) 8/ When we say “why learn Latin when you can read it in translation,” just know that despite agreeing, I am crying quietly inside—a lot of my MA work was about how things get translated (or not) between languages and cultures.–-Em [Yes, translators should be credited as equal to authors!!–Jesse] 9/ If we actually discussed the frequency of communion before, will put link here. [I’m sure we’ve discussed it, but we don’t seem to have made a note.–Jesse] 10/ If a pope and an antipope collide, they annihilate each other. True facts. 11/ Jean Gerson came up in our episode on Joan d’Arc (ep. 6 notes 25, 27, and 33; ep. 8 note 9; ep. 9 note 23). Probably some others. Council of Constance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Constance 12/ The man, the myth, the MARTIN LUTHER (1483–1546). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther 13/ John Wycliffe was mentioned recently—see episode 47. 14/ Jesus’ quotation about the camel needle: “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24) [I clearly missed the, uh, abbreviation to “rich man passing through the eye of a camel.” Otherwise there would have been many, many lolz.–Jesse] 15/ The question of cannibalism was in episode 3, note 24. 16/ This is from the first section of Ulysses, lines 636–650: — After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own master, it seems to me. — I am the servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian. — Italian? Haines said. A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me. — And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs. — Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean? — The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church. Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke. — I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame. The character of Haines is a British student studying Irish folklore, and I want to say his line about “It seems history is to blame” is just so amazingly apropo and also insufficient and just, like, it says everything

Synopsis Let’s talk about the Waldensians, the Lollards, and some revolting peasants. Wait. Oh well–Anyway, we talk a lot about how the Pope gave all the Franciscans’ stuff back to them and forced them to own stuff, some Shakespeare, and a lot of heresies. Notes 1/ RI Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250. Wiley-Blackwell, 2007 (2nd ed). https://www.amazon.com/Formation-Persecuting-Society-Authority-Deviance/dp/1405129646 2/ Waldensians: not related to either Walden pond or Where’s Waldo. [Unfortunately! Where’s the Waldensian would be a very different book. –Jesse] 3/ Michelangelo got paid 3,000 ducats in 1512, which is apparently about $78,000 in today’s money. 4/ The Shoes of the Fisherman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shoes_of_the_Fisherman In the film he sells the Church’s stuff to help avert nuclear war. [Good film!–Jesse] 5/ For more on St Francis, see previous episodes: most of them. 6/ Vernacular translations of scripture: please recall the scene in The Hunchback of Notre Dame wherein the archdeacon, looking at a printed book and at the cathedral, notes, “Ceci tuera cela” (this will kill that). 7/ According to Wikipedia, in 1975 the Waldensian church (then known as the Waldensian Evangelical Church) merged with the Methodists to form the Union of Methodist and Waldensian Churches. Unclear how many Waldensians remain, but there seem to be biggish groups in Italy, Germany, the US, and Uruguay. 8/ Joachim of Fiore (c.1135–1202) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_of_Fiore 9/ Pope John XXII issued the papal bull “Cum inter nonnullos” in 1323. The bull states that the doctrine of the absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles is heretical(!). So, instead of “You can’t own nothing” you actually do have to own things. https://www.franciscan-archive.org/bullarium/qinn-e.html 10/ Pope Nicholas III issues the papal bull “Exiit qui seminat” in 1279, confirming the Rule of the Franciscans. This would seem to allow apostolic poverty, but as we see from John XXII’s bull above, the debate wasn’t over. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/nichol03/exiit-e.htm 11/ The Vatican returning all the Franciscans’ stuff sounds weirdly like they’re breaking up. (It does! Weirdly, all their stuff was returned in order NOT to break up.–Jesse] 12/ For more on transubstantiation see episode 3 note 8, and for more on the festival of Corpus Christi, see all of episode 6 (and also notes 4 and 14). 13/ John Wycliffe (c. 1330–1384): leader of the Lollards or Wycliffites. We mentioned Wycliff in episode 7 note 24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wycliffe 14/ John of Gaunt shows up in Richard II. 15/ The book was The Saragossa Manuscript by Jan Potocki. 16/ The Peasants’ Revolt (1381). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0iAcQVIokg 17/ John Ball (c1338–1381) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ball_(priest) We mentioned him in episode 36 note 6. 18/ Nicholas Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409,” Speculum, 70 (1995), 822–6. Thomas Arundel (1353–1414) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Arundel 19/ Margery Kemp was in episode 6 note 29, episode 7 note 23, episode 8 note 4, episode 9 note 3, and episode 36 note 17. (Wow, we talked about her a lot.) 20/ Sir John Oldcastle was a real knight and some small part of the inspiration for Falstaff. Originally, Shakespeare seems to have called the character Sir John Oldcastle, as seen in 1 Henry IV I.ii.38 where Hal calls Falstaff “my old lad of the castle.” Apparently someone (a descendent of Oldcastle? Someone warning Shakespeare about critiquing martyrs?) complained/suggested, and Shakespeare changed the name. Falstaff appears in 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Henry V (offstage). Interestingly, Sir John Fastolf was also a real person. Oldcastle Revolt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldcastle_Revolt 21/ Wycliffe Jean: if you were born significantly after 1983, click here and listen.

Synopsis So, say you like what Christianity has to offer generally. That Jesus kid seems like he has a good head on his shoulders. But theologically, you have a problem. Maybe you’re a Gnostic and think they’re wrong about the spiritual vs physical world. Maybe you think more women should be allowed to participate in services. Maybe you think that whole trinity thing is a little weird. Maybe you just want to make the Church really angry and get killed in a crusade. But it’s still before Martin Luther, so what do you do? Welcome, traveler, to the world of proto-Protestant heresies. From the Ante-Nicene period during which things were still getting figured out to the Cathars, join us for a conversation about proto-Protestants and their heresies, with bountiful references to Life of Brian. Annotations 1/ See episode 47 for more on Gnosticism and Manichaeism. Also, by dualism, we mean specifically the (initially) Gnostic belief that there’s a spiritual world that is the “real” world, and also a physical world that is kind of a mistake. There are other kinds of dualism. [Hi Descartes!!–Jesse] 2/ Em references Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson: take a drink. 3/ Liminal: being between two different states, often because of a societal ritual. Communitas: the community found during a state-change ritual. [Thank you Victor Turner!–Jesse] 4/ Bart Ehrman texts: Lost Christianities Lost Scriptures Forgery and Misforgery Misquoting Jesus 5/ Ante-Nicene period (Christianity before 325 CE): the time before the Council of Nicea. People were figuring things out. Actual filmic representation: “Blessed are they who convert their neighbors thusly, for they shall inhibit their girth. And to them only shall be given…”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deDlab6vFgg The Judean People’s Front: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0BpfwazhUA 6/ Jesus chasing the moneylenders out of the temple: Matthew 21:12–17, Mark 11:15–19, Luke 19:45–48 AND last but definitely not least, the more dramatic retelling with whips and table-flipping, John 2:13–16. Also, Jesus yelling at the Pharisees: Luke 11:37–54, Matthew 23:1–39. Also Godspell “Alas for you”: https://youtu.be/oeBy1Ee8LCg 7/ Destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple For more on Yom Kippur recapitulating the Temple ceremonies, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur#Temple_service 8/ Sacraments, for those curious: baptism, communion, confirmation, penance, marriage, last rights, and taking holy orders. I suppose most Catholics can only ever do six out of seven. But if you want to read about a guy who gets to do all seven, read Priestdaddy, by Patricia Lockwood. Also, read it because it’s amazing. 9/ As you might surmise, Christian churches that reject the position that the Christian god is a trinity are called…nontrinitarian. Some of the groups you may have heard of that hold this belief include Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, and members of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship (a sub-group of Unitarian Universalists, who are not themselves Christian but instead the religious equivalent of a hug and a cup of tea while listening to NPR). For more, check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontrinitarianism 10/ The Council of Nicea, 325 CE, in Turkey: remember this, it’s one of those big ones that comes up a lot. 11/ Ignatius of Antioch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_of_Antioch Lotta stuff happened in Antioch. Well, maybe that’s like saying a lot of stuff happens in New York or London. 12/ Nag Hammadi Library. See also episode 47 (note 6). 13/ For those wondering, the seven Unitarian principles are: the inherent worth of every person; justice, equity, and compassion in human relations; acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth; a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; the right of conscience and the use of democratic process within their congregations and society; the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. Em: I love Unitarianism as a religion. It just… doesn’t have quite as easy a time explaining itself as, e.g., “There is no G-d but G-d and Muhammed is his messenger,” which I have to admit is extremely pithy. 14/ Council of Ephasus, 431 CE. Exit the Assyrian Church. Council of Calcedon, 451 CE. Exit the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Miaphysitism: Jesus has one nature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miaphysitism Great schism: 1054 CE. More on schisms! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schism#Christianity Nice branch graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schism#/media/File:Christianity_Branches.svg 15/ For more on icons, see episode 10 on Icons and Iconography! 16/ Did we talk about priests getting married at some point? I swear we di

Synopsis Manichaeism: The number one major world religion you’ve never heard of. In order to understand it and its prophet, Mani, we need to understand Gnosticism, a complex and subtle philosophy regarded as a heresy by the Christians. The short version is, “[i]n the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move” (Douglas Adams). For the long version, you better listen to this episode. References (We get no kickbacks from links–they’re for information only.) Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Christianities-Battles-Scripture-Faiths/dp/0195182499/ Iain Gardner, The Founder of Manichaeism: Rethinking the Life of Mani. https://www.amazon.com/Founder-Manichaeism-Rethinking-Life-Mani/dp/1108499074 Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, Vol. 1). https://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Mysticism-Origins-Presence-Christian/dp/0824514041 Kevin Madigan, Medieval Christianity: A New History. https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Christianity-History-Kevin-Madigan/dp/0300216777/ Annotations 1/ See episode 7 note 10 and episode 26 note 9 for more on Hedwig. 2/ Lil Nas X includes a short excerpt from Symposium in Greek at the beginning of the video for MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name) (see around 1:11 in). If you’re wondering–yes, Em absolutely did text Jesse to ask what it said when she watched the video for the first time. Here’s a nice breakdown of the references in the video (including a shout out to Hedwig): https://time.com/5951024/lil-nas-x-montero-video-symbolism-explained/ 3/ Plato and Aristotle were both very influential during this time period, but I believe Aristotle was more influential in the Muslim world, while Plato was more influential in the Christian one. The podcast The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps has touched on this a bit. If you’re really interested in the forms and Plato’s various other ideas, a good place to start is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on him here. 4/ This is The School of Athens by Raphael: This is not a pipe: (The Treachery of Images, by Rene Magritte) 5/ Gnosis means knowledge. This is relatively unrelated to what Gnostics believe, which is…a lot of stuff. Primarily, because of evil, the material world exists, and thus the material world was created as an error. The “real” real world is the spiritual world. 6/ Nag Hammadi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library 7/ For more on mysticism and asceticism, check out episodes 5 and 6. 8/ The Bible Code. Not a novel, just one of the dumber ideas of our time. The author, among other things, suggests that the code he finds in the Torah was put there by extraterrestrials (who also created DNA), and that there is a steel obelisk buried near the Dead Sea that might have more info. I love a good obelisk, but I will believe this when I see it. 9/ Docetism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docetism 10/ Origen of Alexandria (c.184–c. 253): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen 11/ Augustine of Hippo (354–430): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo 12/ Mani (c.216–274/277): founder of Manicheanism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mani_(prophet) Iain Gardner, The Founder of Manichaeism: Rethinking the Life of Mani https://www.amazon.com/Founder-Manichaeism-Rethinking-Life-Mani/dp/1108499074 (The long quote is from page 2.) 13/ The Passion of the Christ: a film by Mel Gibson. As distinct from The Last Temptation of Christ, which featured David Bowie as Pilate and was therefore by default a superior film. (J/k: I, Em, who wrote this, have never seen either in their entirety.) 14/ The mother of Constantine was, of course, St. Helen of Constantinople (now Istanbul), aka the Empress Helena. Obligatory upon the mention of Constantinople (now Istanbul): https://youtu.be/xo0X77OBJUg 15/ “We’ve recently learned the value of charismatic leaders.” Months later, I have absolutely no idea what this was about. It’s clearly a little dig about something, but what? 16/ In case you missed it earlier, Manichaeism’s Wikipedia page is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism

Synopsis After an unexpected late-season hiatus, we’re back with an episode on musical forms! We’ve got the earliest hymns, the maddest madrigals, tuning and temperament, at least three different types of chant, and a song so recursive it will summon Douglas Hofstadter if you play it into a mirror in a dark room. Annotations 1/ If you don’t remember everything we talked about, refer to episodes 40 and 43. 2/ Hurrian Hymn (see episode 43 note 19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrian_songs https://youtu.be/Tx6v0t5I5SM (performed by Michael Levy) 3/ The Delphic Oracle, aka the Pythia. 4/ Hymns to Apollo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphic_Hymns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws7xUHt_W4o (performed by Michael Levy) Hermes was mentioned in episode 40, note 4. 5/ They’re both lyres, but they’re tuned differently. 6/ Pythagorean tuning was not the only ancient Greek tuning! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_system_of_ancient_Greece 7/ Plainsong Monophony Neume 8/ Gregorian chant. We talked about Pope Gregory in episode 2. Ambrose Bierce: author of The Devil’s Dictionary. Saint Ambrose of Milan Ambrosian chant 9/ The last castrato was Alessandro Moreschi, and he died in 1922. 10/ Gallican chant excerpt performed by Sequentia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S08SIkWldSU From Paris, BNF, ms. lat. 776, 11th century https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84546727/f301.item 11/ For more on the Ordo/Hildegard, see episode 6, notes 17 and 23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1sJ91rS0o0 At 3:38 you can see “Felix Anima” in red letters at the top left of the second page. This means that Anima–the everyperson character of the play, the Soul–is supposed to sing “happily.” Stage directions! For Jesse’s rant, see episode 15, I think. 12/ Adam de la Halle: see episode 31 note 13. 13/ Polyphony Early three-voice motet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro2JTnfmjzA Same YouTube clip for all: 1. O Maria, maris stella (single-texted three-voice motet) (0:00) 2. O Maria virgo, O Maria, maris stella (double motet) (1:01) 3. Quand je parti (two-voice motet) (2:15) 4. En nom Dieu – Quand voi – Eius in oriente (double motet) (3:45) 5. Trop sovent – Brunete – In seculum (double motet) (4:52) The Hilliard Ensemble 14/ Music of the Middle Ages: An Anthology for Performance and Study, by David Wilson. https://www.amazon.com/Music-Middle-Ages-Anthology-Performance/dp/9382661026 15/ Formes fixes ballade, rondeau, and virelai. 16/ Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300–1377) 17/ Machaut’s Rondeau “My End Is My Beginning” (“Mon fin est mon commencement”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcfPr4IN2MM (performed by Performed by: Charles Daniels, Angus Smith, & Don Greig and transcribed and animated by Jordan Alexander Key) So meta that Douglas Hofstater something something. 18/ Machaut – Virelai: “Douce dame jolie” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kM5qJi2v3c From Cantata Profana’s show “Ancient Groove Music” live at the HERE Arts Center, NYC June 2017. 19/ Machaut – Ballade “Dame, ne regardes pas” (from BNF ff 1584) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyGhW9JKOz8 Performed by LIBER: Ensemble for Early Music (formerly Liber unUsualis) 20/ Trecento Madrigal Francesco Landini, “Musica Son Già Furon Ciascun Vuol” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNcfZSBF9ow Performance by: Gothic Voices on “A Laurel for Landini” and transcription by Jordan Alexander Key 21/ Madrigal by Jacopo da Bologna “Fenice fu” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8EikqtlB_w 22/ Claudio Monteverde (1567–1643) Monteverdi – Madrigals, Book 8 “Hor che’l ciel e la terra” (Les Cris de Paris, Geoffroy Jourdain) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3F_q2PWXo 23/ John Dowland (1563–1626) “Fine Knack for Ladies” (performed by the King’s Singers) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEXw7tk4F28 And the Sting one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_from_the_Labyrinth 24/ Hildegard von Blingen is a bardcore musician. Example. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ_jwWjf8u5mdtac71Be8QA Bardcore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardcore

Summary More on the Feast of Fools and the Kalends, with some digressions about Roman Emperor Claudius and labyrinths. Annotations For most of the Feast of Fools and Herod info from this episode, see Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Folly-History-Feast-Fools/dp/0801479495 1/ The Kalends (or calends, hence calendar :)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calends 2/ Episode 18, note 1 on syncretism. 3/ For medieval mummers or ‘guisers’ (possibly depicting a Kalends celebration) see Bodleian manuscript 264, p. 21v: click here. The actual text is from The Romance of Alexander and dates from around 1340. 4/ Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England https://www.amazon.com/Masking-Medieval-England-Studies-Performance-dp-1138257850/dp/1138257850/ 5/ Episode 18, note 10 includes the Bodleian MS linked above in note 3. It’s a great image, and we’ve talked about it a lot! 6/ Do we need to note that slates are like tiny blackboards? And that blackboards are things teachers traditionally present their lessons on using chalk? 7/ I’m (Em) definitely taking a mulligan this year and starting my new year at Tết (this year it’s Feb 1st). 8/ Sandy Koufax, famous Jewish baseball player. For more on Jewish baseball players, see https://www.baseball-almanac.com/legendary/Jewish_baseball_players.shtml (Also, this is a reference to this scene from the greatest film ever made, The Big Lebowski. Warning, contains swearing.) 9/ Twelfth Night (the holiday not the play!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night_(holiday) Epiphany (when the magi–aka the three wise men–visit Jesus) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(holiday) King Cake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_cake 10/ For more on the Jewish hat (judenhut) and its connection to the magi (and possibly witches and wizards), see episode 10, notes 31 and 39; episode 25, note 14; and episode 41, note 7. This info and theory is from Sara Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography, Metropolitan, 2014. Link. 11/ Slaughter (or Massacre) of the Innocents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents About Robert Graves’s amazing novel I, Claudius. It’s historical fiction covering the time period from Julius Cesar’s assassination to Claudius’s assention to the throne (about 44 BCE to 41 CE). There’s apparently also a substantial biography of Herod in the sequel, Claudius the God. 12/ Hamlet III.ii https://myshakespeare.com/hamlet/act-3-scene-2-popup-note-index-item-termagant-and-herod Hamlet: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier had spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently. For in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I could have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it. 13/ Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Folly-History-Feast-Fools/dp/0801479495 14/ Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Princes_in_Amber It is a men-with-swords-and-magic fantasy novel with a somewhat noirish twist? You should definitely not expect any female characters. But it’s fun. If you are interested in what the heck Em was talking about when she tried to explain the labyrinth dance, here is the place to look, although they suggest the ball is actually made of leather, not wool. Labyrinths were a big feature in medieval cathedrals. 15/ For more on Palmesel donkeys (used to recreate Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem on what becomes Palm Sunday), see episode 3, note 10. 16/ For more on Balaam and his donkey, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaam For the actual story, see Numbers 22:21–39 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2022%3A21-39&version=NIV

Summary Christmas, a season for overeating, arguing with your parents about politics, and…wearing masks? Join Em and Jesse as they talk about topsy turvy Medieval holidays like the Feast of Fools! Also we talk a little about the Purge film/TV franchise, Rabelais, and Foucault. Sorry to the two people who follow us who are not excited about poststructuralism. Annotations 1/ It was actually episode 42. For liminality, see episode 18 note 8 (and episode 19 note 7, which sends you to episode 18 note 8). 2/ The tradition of throwing candy originates in a tradition called an “aufruf” (pronounced “oof roof”)–right before a groom (or in non-Orthodox temples, a couple) got married, they would get called up to read from the Torah–this is typically done at the Shabbat before the wedding. Afterward people in the congregation throw candy at him/them. I don’t know exactly how we started doing this for bnai mitzvot in our temple, except that it happened at some point in the two and a half years between my bat mitzvah and my brother’s bar mitzvah. 3/ The Purge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purge (it’s actually five films, a two-season TV series, and a plan for more films.) 4/ Mikhail Bakhtin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakhtin See Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World for his theories of the carnivalesque and grotesque. https://www.amazon.com/Rabelais-His-World-Mikhail-Bakhtin/dp/0253203414/ 5/ François Rabelais (born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553): episode 39 (on libraries). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Rabelais 6/ For more on Foucault’s idea of power/knowledge, see literally everything he ever wrote, and especially Discipline and Punish and the book Power / Knowledge (which was not *by* Foucault but collects a lot of stuff he said). 7/ Photo of trussed up skeletons from Halloween 8/ The Three Living and the Three Dead: see episode 2(!), the image at the top of the notes and note 35. I am too depressed to footnote Jesse’s predictions about the VA elections. (Jesse: Glenn Youngkin-R won.) 9/ Foucault’s power structure idea is laid out pretty plainly around page 90 of A History of Human Sexuality, vol. 1. 10/ Actually, it was episode 10, on icons and iconography. See note 4. They’ve been dismantling the pedestal of the Lee statue, and they found a time capsule that they just opened. https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/22/us/virginia-lee-time-capsule-open-trnd/index.html Here’s the statue coming down: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/08/1035004639/virginia-ready-to-remove-massive-robert-e-lee-statue-following-a-year-of-lawsuit 11/ Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Folly-History-Feast-Fools/dp/0801479495 12/ We talked about Jean Gerson (and usually Joan of Arc) in episode 6 notes 25, 27, and 33 and also episode 8 note 9 and episode 9 note 23. 13/ Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England https://www.amazon.com/Masking-Medieval-England-Studies-Performance-dp-1138257850/dp/1138257850/ 14/ For more on St Francis and Christmas, see episode 23 note 7. 15/ A headdress/mask/helmet from Yorkshire, British Isles c8000 BCE housed in the British Museum. Made of antler (the skull and antlers of a red deer stag): https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1953-0208-1 16/ Buffy, season 2 episode 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_(Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer) 17/ We ARE in the late-post-Middle Ages!

Summary More on music! (Shoutout to episode 40/music part 1, which came out a while ago now.) We talk about dulcimers and gitterns, viols and tabors, Jew’s harps and gamelans, and Jesse’s favorite–the bagpipe. Also tuning, temperament, aaaand a little Monty Python. Annotations 1/ The Early Instrument Database at Case Western Reserve University, Ross Duffin. 2/ Dulcimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulcimer AKA “A damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw”: I think the lyre just feels more like a post-Raphielite instrument. Ditzy Dulcimer. Dulcimer, lyre, and lute, the Ferrara Ensemble directed by Crawford Young playing an excerpt from “Fortuna Desperata.” (See website for full citation.) 3/ Gittern Gittern with harp, Ferrara Ensemble playing an excerpt from “Chanconeta Tedescha” (see website for full citation). Workshop medieval gittern https://youtu.be/eA4CtdXnWWs 4/ Viola de gamba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viol A quick google suggests that $10k might be on the cheap side for a contrabassoon. Possibly because most of the ones that are made are professional quality. 5/ Jew’s Harp / Jaw Harp / Mouth Harp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew%27s_harp Doctor Who Theme Song. Fun fact: Although it sounds like a theremin, the Doctor Who theme song was actually produced by recording a single plucked string and then cutting the tape up, putting it back together in weird ways, playing it faster or slower, etc.–a technique known as musique concrète. Considering that it was done in 1963, this was considered pretty innovative. (Also, belated happy Doctor Who day to everyone–it’s November 23, right around the time I am editing this.) 6/ Tabor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabor_(instrument) Brave Sir Robin clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZwuTo7zKM8 (sorry about the lack of pixels, apparently every Monty Python clip was uploaded to the internet around 2006). (Contains a timbril.) 7/ Gamelan Em makes reference to the unification of Indonesia. The short version of the story here is that much like China, India, and French Indochina, Indonesia was once a bunch of independent kingdoms/sultanates/what-have-yous. Like India and French Indochina, it was forced to think of itself as one place rather than a large island archipelago (actually, the largest, with over 17,000 islands!) by colonial interests, in this case the Dutch and the Dutch East India Company (see also episode 11, note 30 for passing mention of them). Some of these, uh, sedimented countries stayed together after the colonials pulled out (e.g., Indonesia), some fell apart (e.g., French Indochina), and some stayed mostly together but with a few notable pieces leaving the main (e.g., India). 8/ Xylophone The xylophone is also mentioned in nearly every alphabet book for children because English has so few words that start with X (or at least such words that have been deemed appropriate for children). Technically, I (Em) played the broken vibraphone in the marching band–when a vibraphone is broken or unplugged, it turns into a xylophone, I think. Balafon 9/ The organ! This is Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565: https://youtu.be/Nnuq9PXbywA Link to Nancy Kito: https://twitter.com/EnsLeonarda/status/1241870110874308608?s=20 Video of someone hitting “transpose” at the wrong moment: https://www.classicfm.com/composers/handel/messiah-organ-fail/ 10/ Jesse’s favorite: The Medieval Bagpipe Hurryken Productions More bagpipes! Here are some images of medieval bagpipes (and sound from a modern recreation) from the Case Western site: https://caslabs.case.edu/medren/medieval-instruments/bagpipe-medieval/ [Bagpipes are double reed instruments, like the bassoon and the oboe (also the heckelphone and the sarrusophone). Of these, obviously the bassoon is the best. As a former bassoonist, I wish I could say this was the first time that I’ve had a conversation where I cast scorn and/or aspersions on the bagpipe, but it is not.–Em] 11/ Horns Carnyx: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnyx Carnyx, performed by Abraham Cupeiro. Cow horn The SNL skit! Jesse teaches this in class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrpQVSVa2QI 12/ Oud and lute song from the Cantigas de Santa Maria (written in medieval Galician-Portuguese language during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile (1221–84) and often attributed to him). Here are images from a manuscript of the Cantigas (and scroll down to hear the duet from the episode): https://thedutchluthier.wordpress.com/2016/07/08/cantigas-de-santa-maria/ Oud and lute, performed by Sequentia. For more on Alfonso X, who wrote a song about a ferret he owned as a pet and really loved, see episode 29, note 22. 13/ Sequentia is an awesome group and has done a lot of work on Hildegard’s music: https://www.sequentia.org/projects/hildegard.html We’ve discussed Hildegard in episodes 5, 6, 7, 8, 16, 26, 29, 30, and 32. She’s important

Summary Do you want some candy, little girl? Of course you do, it’s delicious. But what was candy a thousand years ago? Turns out at least some of it was kind of similar to what we get today. Annotations Some book recommendations: Steven Epstein, An Economic and Social History of Later Medieval Europe, 1000–1500. Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. If you are downloading this podcast on 11/16/21, you can get a free copy of a journal with two of Em’s weird speculative fiction poem-things here. For the week following 11/16, it will be on sale for under $4 CDN (so like $3 freedom bucks) for a week. Please consider downloading (and if you do, leave a review)! 1/ John Mirk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mirk Mirk’s Festial or Liber Festivalis (The quote about getting souls out of purgatory is in the middle of page 270): https://archive.org/details/mirksfestialcoll01mirkuoft/page/270/mode/2up 17:30 I (Em) actually didn’t know there was a tie between how many people say kaddish for you and how fast you get into heaven–there is another tradition that you don’t say kaddish for someone after a year except on the anniversary of their death, because to do so suggests that you think they’re in hell. Meaning that if you sin so much that you go to hell and one year’s worth of kaddish doesn’t get you out, it’s going to take a while, I guess. 2/ 21:xx: French toast, or pain perdu. Looking this up isn’t too easy, but a number of websites claim that bread in “pain perdu” is lost because they are using stale bread (bread that is lost, i.e. dead) and bringing it back to life. The name in English is occasionally suggested to have come from a guy named Joseph French (so similar to German chocolate cake). 3/ Apicius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius The recipe is: “Aliter dulcia: siligineos rasos frangis, et buccellas maiores facies. in lacte infundis, frigis, ex [in] oleo, mel superfundis et inferes.” For the recipe, scroll down to the number 302 (the number is in parenthesis in the left margin): https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/16439/pg16439-images.html#bk7 4/ “Sweetbread is something else.” For those who didn’t watch Silence of the Lambs as children, sweetbreads are the thymus and pancreas. The pudding is from British Library manuscript Harley 279 (c1430). Here is a blog that includes a transcription: https://coquinaria.nl/en/strawberye/ 5/ The Middle Ages also used almond milk. And yet not mentioned in Dante’s Inferno. . . [Yes, more on this will be upcoming in a future episode!–Jesse] 6/ In VN, this drink is called nuoc mia and it is much better than Gatorade when you’re out and about on a hot day. 7/ Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant”: https://creativetime.org/projects/karawalker/ 8/ Robbie McCauley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_McCauley and a brief excerpt of Sugar https://vimeo.com/131050638 9/ Ama Ata Aidoo (b1942) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ama_Ata_Aidoo Aidoo’s play Anowa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anowa 10/ This recipe is from British Library MS Harley 2378. Here is the recipe “To Clarifie Sugar”: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_2378_f155r Here is the recipe I read, “To Make Penydes” (begins at the bottom of folio 157v): http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_2378_f157v 11/ Here is an article about child labor and the chocolate industry. The decision (see here, from June 2021)is a little different than Em represented it–basically, six adult survivors of child trafficking/slave labor were denied the opportunity to sue Nestle USA and Cargill under a law called the Alien Torte Statute based on the fact that they didn’t establish that the companies made major operational decisions in the US. In the words of the great philosopher Dan Le Sac, “Thou shalt not buy Nestle products.” 12/ Here is a fun article on the history of licorice: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7125727/ The OED’s etymology for licorice helpfully tells us that the “Greek γλυκύρριζα (latinized glycyrrhiza by Pliny), < γλυκύς sweet + ῥίζα root.” 13/ Ann Reardon using marshmallow! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkjUBcjlaz4

Summary It’s spooky season! Witches have been around–and feared–since the Middle Ages. We discuss their history, unexpected ties to Judaism, and their little (or large and wolfy) dogs, too. Annotations 1/ See also: Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett. Book 1 of the collected Sandman (I think they get summoned in issue 2) by Neil Gaiman. 2/ Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett. For more on the inquisition, et al, see episode 9, starting at note 18. 3/ The witch of Endor: 1 Samuel 28. 4/ Morgan Le Fay. We talk more about Merlin, Morgause, et al in a future episode. 5/ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, now a major motion picture (and future episode, stay tuned). 6/ In Terry Pratchett, the witches’ roles are typically given as “the maiden, the mother, and the other one.” 7/ For more on the Jewish hat (Judenhutte), see episode 10, note 39. For more on the robes, see episode 25, note 19 on the Lucerne Passion Play and its director, Renward Cysat. 8/ Sara Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography. 9/ Episode 29 is our episode on dogs, and episode 30 is our episode on cats. 10/ For more on the iconography of Jewish women, see Sara Lipton, “Where Are the Gothic Jewish Women? On the Non-Iconography of the Jewess in the Cantigas de Santa Maria,” Jewish History, vol. 22, no. 1/2, The Elka Klein Memorial Volume (2008), pp. 139–177. Also see episode 25, note 15. 11/34:40: C.f. Henry IV, pt. 1: Falstaff: Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief. Prince: No, thou shalt. Falstaff: Shall I? O rare! By the Lord, I’ll be a brave judge. Prince: Thou judgest false already. I mean thou shalt have the hanging of the thieves, and so become a rare hangman. Falstaff: Well, Hal, well, and in some sort it jumps with my humor as well as waiting in the court, I can tell you. Prince: For obtaining of suits? Falstaff: Yea, for obtaining of suits, whereof the hangman hath no lean wardrobe. 12/ Witches of Subeshi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies 13/ For more on a lot of the following information, see Davidson and Canino “Wolves, Witches, and Werewolves: Lycanthropy and Witchcraft from 1423 to 1700,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 2.4 (8) (1990), pp. 47–73. Also Charles Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300–1500. 14/ 42:30: James I–Lore did a good podcast on this–see episode 138 (Foresight). Dr Who episode “The Witchfinders.” 15/ The early modern sources I’ve mentioned include: Flagellum Maleficorum by Petrus Mamoris (roughly 1462). De Lamiis et Phitonicis mulieribus by Ulrich Molitor (published in 1489). The vastly more famous Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Kramer (1486). 16/ The 1460 sermon preached by Pierre le Broussart is discussed in Zika 61–63. The images are also in Zika. 17/ 1:09:xx Witches in films seemed to be a major thing in the 80s and early 90s, coinciding with the working 80s boss bitch and the mommy wars…

Summary You may have heard someone say that music is in their bones, but is it really? Answer: Yes! (If you are a Neanderthal, anyway.) In fact, the earliest instrument we have found, dating from 50-60,000 years ago, is a flute made from the bone of a cave bear. In this episode, we’ll discuss instruments from the last ice age through to the 12th century CE, including the lute, the lyre, the dutar, the sitar, and the hurdy-gurdy! Annotations (Note: the title is a reference to something written on the sleeve of David Bowie’s seminal album Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Don’t actually play this at maximum volume.) 1/ For what it’s worth, here is a video of a cat playing a theremin. And what the heck, here is a cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the theremin. [WUT. –Jesse] 2/ Bone Flute full recording. Check it out–the video includes a demonstration of how the bone in question was restored. 3/ The Double Flute (Aulos) full recording. The guy playing the flutes (Barnaby Brown) gives an interesting history of the instrument in the full version. “You know those guitars that are, like, double guitars?” Aulos! Here’s the Wikipedia page with some nice pictures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulos and here’s an image of a tiny statue/figurine at Delphi (with straps arounds his cheeks for support): https://www.worldhistory.org/uploads/images/1021.jpg?v=1615882502 https://www.worldhistory.org/image/1021/bronze-aulos-player-figurine/ 4/ Here’s the Homeric Hymn to Hermes that describes him inventing the lyre. It’s in the second and third paragraphs–it’s the first thing he does after being born. Lyre of Ur, built and played by Luc Vanlaere. Check it out, the lyre is quite a beautiful object. The harpist is a Belgian, living in Bruges, who has his own “free entry” theater in which he gives free (donation-supported) shows three times a day, five days a week. Here he is written up on VisitBruges.be (he doesn’t seem to have a website). If you are interested in modern Western composers who use halftones (formally: semitones), check out Igor Stravinsky or Arnold Schoenberg. Also, this wikipedia page has an explanation of temperament and Pythagorian tuning, among other things, and might be helpful if we have confused you. 5/ Sirens were like angry bird-women. They sang to Odysseus. See also episode 29, note 14 for images of sirens as funeral monuments, holding tortoise shell lyres. Here are the images again: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Funerary_statue_of_a_Siren_at_the_National_Archaeological_Museum_of_Athens_on_7_May_2018.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Funerary_statue_of_a_Siren._4th_cent._B.C.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_Siren.jpg (The Siren in the final image also holds a “plectrum,” used to pluck the lyre.) 6/ Michael Levy plays the lyre. He is playing an original composition called “Mount Olympus.” You can check out his full album of lyre music here. Michael Levy plays the first written melody. “Der Holle Rache” is the Queen of the Night’s famous aria. Here’s an excellent version. 7/ The ektara, played by Mrighanavi. More on the ektara. 8/ Dutar, performed by Alimjan. This is a traditional Uyghur song. “The left side of China.” Also known as the West side. I don’t know, guys, I’m going to blame this one on being left handed? Maybe? Weirdly (or not weirdly, I dunno), in the video above, Alimjan is sitting next to a table full of Uyghur food, including the delicious bread that I remember from the last time I visited Beijing over a decade ago. I would love to put a link to a Uyghur-supporting charity, but I can’t find any that seem well rated. Amnesty International might be a good choice. “Krazy kiya re” played on the zitar (guitar/sitar) by Niladri Kumar. You should definitely go look at this video–the instrument itself is just incredible. And right around the 2:14 mark, dude turns into the Indian Slash. 9/ Shamisen, played by Sumie Kaneko. See episode 16, note 7 for more shamisen discussion and videos. 10/ Oud, played by Osama Badawe. The Ood are a race of weird aliens in Doctor Who. Unrelated. [Yay. –Jesse] 11/ Lute, played by Paul O’Dette. For more on Alfonso’s Cantigas (and his ferret), see episode 29, note 22. For the image discussed, see: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cantiga_120_baldosa.jpg Here’s a large black and white version of the image: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cantigas/images/12.gif 12/ Hurdy gurdy, played by Matthais Loibner. 13/ Epigonian, played by Lina Palera. 14/ Psaltery, played by Tessey Ueno. 15/ Bowed psaltery, played by James Jones.

Summary What was the one weird habit of the Ptolemys that librarians hated? What trick did early indexers use for organizing collections? And what major library lost some really important documents–and tried to keep it a secret? From Alexandria to the Medieval monastery, let’s talk about the evolution of libraries over the course of a thousand years. (Title source.) Annotations Lionel Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World, https://www.amazon.com/Libraries-Ancient-World-Lionel-Casson/dp/0300097212 Special Issue: The Medieval Library, French Studies 70.2 (April 2016). 1/ How was papyrus made? We only sort of know: https://apps.lib.umich.edu/papyrus-collection/how-ancient-papyrus-was-made https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/papy/hd_papy.htm https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ancientbooks/2016/05/23/67/ 2/ Indeed, Plato discusses wax tablets in the context of memory in Theaetetus. 3/ Library of Alexandria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria 4/ Zenodotus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenodotus 5/ Em is talking about the Hinman Collator! 6/ Callimachus of Cyrene and his Pinakes (lists or tables): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callimachus 7/ [36:xx] Just to be clear, people who read Chinese/Thai/other unspaced languages as their native languages don’t read aloud to know where the breaks between words are–that’s a technique for us second language learners. I can’t make any specific statements about the evolution of silent reading in those cultures. –Em Paul Saenger, “Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society,” Viator 13 (1982): 367–414. Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading, https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=683 8/ British Library. Here are the British Library manuscript collections, and here are the specifics about the Cotton collection. 9/ [46:xx] “Caesar was assassinated about two weeks ago.” Apparently we recorded this just after the Ides of March (the 15th). Wow. 10/ [49:xx] Just to be clear, a codex is what we think of as a book. It’s typical to only really hear the word “codex” when talking about Mayan Codices (like the Dresden Codex–obviously the place has nothing to do with the Mayans and everything to do with where the book is held). But a codex just means a book. Codex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex (mentions Martial’s praise of the codex) 11/ [52:xx] To be fair, Jews still write the Torah and Megillot on scrolls, but we also have the Talmud, which is written as a codex bound up together with its commentaries (actually, surrounded by them). So Jews didn’t totally miss the boat when it comes to the new technology. 12/ This commentary from English doctor Martin Lister is described in John O’Brien, “Epilogue: Medieval Libraries in the Sixteenth Century: A Dream of Order and Knowledge,” French Studies 70.2 (April 2016): 228–238; 228. 13/ Cambridge University Library lost two of Darwin’s notebooks in November 2000: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55044129 #embarrassing 14/ “Medieval libraries are studied as collections of books, but much less frequently as collections of ideas” (159). In Luke Sunderland, “Introduction: medieval libraries, history of the book, and literature,” French Studies 70.2 (April 2016): 159–170. 15/ [1:13:xx] Spoiler alert for Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, published in 1983.

Summary “When I was in library school, we never discussed outright conquest as a method of collection development.” In which we discuss books (and other recordkeeping methods), the growth of reading in conjunction with the consolidation of manuscripts, and also Em is a nerd about classification systems. Sources Paul Saenger “Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society,” Viator 13 (1982): 367–414. Paul Saenger Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford University Press link. Lambros Malafouris How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. MIT Press link. Lionel Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World. Amazon link. Annotations 1/ The “map of a cat” story was in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. He has come up before on this podcast too–see episode 2, note 24. 2/ Melvil Dui’s issues could probably fill a three-volume series. Book 1: the problems with the Dewey Decimal System. Book 2: Spelling. Book 3: Sexism. Yanno. Besides Dewey, other common classification systems are Library of Congress Classification (my favorite, despite its faults), Universal Decimal Classification, and Colon Classification (used a lot in India). I believe there may have once been a system called Cutter Classification, which is now only, or largely, extant in “Cutter numbers,” which are the numbers that get put after your classification number to shift it over on the shelf and make it unique while still keeping it in the category you need. Chinese and Russian libraries have their own systems. –Em Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things begins with this famous passage: This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought–our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography–breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the very thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. 3/ “More than twelve.” LOL there’s about 28, or 30 if you count the Wisconsin Historical Society archives and UW’s archives and records management. [Wow, awesome!–JN] 4/ Virtual unfolding! Here is the scientific article by J. Dambrogio et al explaining the process: “Unlocking history through automated virtual unfolding of sealed documents imaged by X-ray microtomography.” and here is an article with a simpler explanation of the scientific paper above: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/972607811/reading-a-letter-thats-been-sealed-for-more-than-300-years-without-opening-it — this was recently published when we recorded this episode. And here is an article about scanning fragile papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum, where a private library of 2,000 scrolls was buried by Mt Vesuvius. (Pompeii wasn’t the only town buried!) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/buried-ash-vesuvius-scrolls-are-being-read-new-xray-technique-180969358/ In episode 32, note 6 we discussed the use of modern technology to read palimpsests. Here’s a fun article on students doing this for a project: https://www.rit.edu/news/rit-students-discover-hidden-15th-century-text-medieval-manuscripts 5/ For general info on Nippur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippur 6/ Ebla tablets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebla_tablets 7/ Hattusa (see the section on the royal archives): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattusa Em: Nowadays, a colophon refers to a page at the end of a work that gives information on the typeface the work is printed in. 8/ Tiglath-Pileser I (reigned c.1115 to 1077 B.C.E.): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiglath-Pileser_I 9/ Ashurbanipal (reigned c. 668 BCE–631 BCE); his library: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Ashurbanipal 10/42:xx The Enuma Elis, we have mentioned before, is the Babylonian creation epic on which the Torah’s creation story may have been partially based. See episode 4, note 3 for more! 11/ Provenance is very important to scholars (and it theoretically ensures that nothing was stolen). https:

Summary The 1560 painting “Children’s Games,” painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Question: What did kids do before Gameboy? Answer: Everything. Annotations Important works: Nicholas Orme’s Medieval Children. Barbara Hanawalt’s The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Children’s Games. 1/ Bringing Up Bebe, by Pamela Druckerman, is the book about how the French raise children. Achtung Baby, by Sara Zaske, is a similar book about Germany. There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather tackles the subject from a Scandinavian point of view, and The Danish Way of Parenting will help you bring up tiny happy vikings. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua, is about how Asian (Asian American?) mothers push their offspring to academic success. There’s basically an endless number of these books purporting to tell parents the same secrets: how to get your kids to eat vegetables, do their homework, and occasionally let you talk to your spouse without interrupting so you don’t entirely lose your mind and sense of self. In my professional opinion, some of it works, some of it doesn’t, and whether you lose your sense of self is entirely up to you. Jesse: The “weird” (and horrible) part is how integral colonialist and imperialist perspectives are to a lot of the views of childrearing that we are discussing at the beginning of this episode. A breathtaking sense of entitlement is required for anyone to hold the incredibly patronizing view that someone (probably a white, western woman) is “discovering” child rearing techniques used by non-western cultures (or even western cultures of which the aforementioned woman is not a part!). It doesn’t matter how many times the woman acknowledges her privilege, the whole concept is still colonialist nonsense. Em: I looked up the chapter I’m referring to, and the writer’s claim is a bit more circumscribed–she merely suggests that births in small-group hunter-gatherer societies (which, as she describes them, are basically egalitarian utopias) are painless, relaxed, guided only by the wise elder women of the tribe, and also lead to babies that develop better moral sense than the poor babies whose mothers have things like epidurals and C-sections available. Relatedly, please, if you are ever looking at someone with a PhD and feeling intimidated, remember that there are a ton of PhD-having people who are basically idiots. 2/ Jesse: I just went to see Free Guy (with Ryan Renolds and Taika Waititi), and there is a nice discussion about the importance and fun of swings. 3/ Pet rock. 4/ A roulette wheel actually has 37, 38, or 39 spaces, depending on if you are playing the single/double/triple zero version. Please credit this podcast when you win $2 off a guy in a pub. 5/ In Terry Pratchett’s Snuff, young Sam (Commander Sam Vimes’s son) very happily collects animal poo. 6/ Hula hoops are most closely related to an Australian exercise hoop made from bamboo brought back to the US in the 1950s, but hoops have been used for various reasons throughout history, the hoop dance being only one example. Check out the Tiktok of hoop dancer James Jones for a sample. The toy/toys mentioned in Gilgamesh is/are actually called “pukku” and “mikku.” They appear in tablet XII, which contains a story of Enkidu glimpsing the underworld, as a sort of preview of his death at the end of the poem. Nobody is entirely sure what they are (at least, per The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Cuneiform Texts, vol. 2, A. R. George, Oxford University Press, 2003, see p. 898). Based on context, a mikku is something made from a long stick, and a pukku is made from a tree trunk. So hoop and stick is a possible translation, or drum/drumstick, or any number of other things. Other poems describe people fighting battles as “clash[ing] together like pukku and mekku” or send[ing] heads rolling like heavy pukkus.” This issue comes up more than you’d think in literature, where we often have no idea what certain things that were very familiar to the authors were, just because the world has changed so much. Bill Bryson mentions a 19th century shaker that sat on Victorian tables alongside salt and pepper–no one knows what it contained. 7/ Cripple Mr Onion is actually a card game similar in some respects to poker and blackjack (summary with rules here). 8/ The Last Dance includes a famous scene of Michael Jordan playing “quarters” (the game where you toss a quarter close to–but not touching–a wall, and the closest player wins). 9/ Em: When I say “we” were prevented from playing with matches, I mean me and my siblings–Jesse, as far as we know, was a perfect child who did not try such a thing. Or didn’t get caught. 10/ The Seventh Seal contains the m

Summary So you lived through birth…now what? Despite the popular image of the Middle Ages putting children to work the instant they were capable of holding a tool, Medieval childhood was actually pretty similar to modern childhood. No iPads, but people bought cute clothes for their kids, lots of different types of toys, sent them to school where they learned Latin (and riddles). Join Em and Jesse to learn about childhood! Notes Important sources for this episode: Nicholas Orme’s Medieval Children https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Children-Nicholas-Orme/dp/0300097549 Christopher Cannon’s From Literacy to Literature: England, 1300-1400 https://www.amazon.com/Literacy-Literature-England-1300-1400/dp/0198779437 1/ Kid President isn’t a kid anymore! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robby_Novak 2/ Marie Antoinette and Her Children (1787) , by Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/656654) Vigee Le Brun painted a number of portraits of Marie Antoinette, and achieved full membership in the Academy. (Although she wasn’t the first woman to be awarded this honor–there were a number who gained Academy membership before the French revolution.) For more on Le Brun, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Élisabeth_Vigée_Le_Brun and Evangelia Karvouni (2014), “Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun: A Historical Survey of a Woman Artist in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of International Women’s Studies, 15(2), 268–285, available at https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1765&context=jiws 3/ True facts, the day that I (Em) was editing this, I calmed a baby by singing “Mack the Knife.” You probably don’t want me to sing to your children. [Jesse: That sounds awesome!] 4/ Coventry Carol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIvH5GdY4JE&ab_channel=drwestbury 5/ Henry Percy, called “Hotspur” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Percy_(Hotspur)) is a major character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, pt. 1 (and also a real person who predated Shakespeare considerably). 6/ John Ball (c.1338–1381) was a priest who played a very important role in the Peasants’ Revolt (1381). 7/ Also, “sparrows” and “arrows” are an obvious English pairing if you want to rhyme. 8/ We have recorded a series of episodes on England Before 1066 in which the Exeter Riddles feature prominently, so look for those episodes in the future! For more on Exeter Riddles in the meantime, see the riddles and the answers and a nice essay (from the British Library) on the riddles: https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/the-exeter-book-riddles-in-context 9/ I (Jesse) had a lot of fun running through some cute Duolingo Latin exercises. It’s definitely Classical pronunciation (“c” always pronounced as “k,” “g” as in “go,” and “v” as “w”). 10/ Sorry to all German speakers. Also, side note, since we recorded this I discovered that John Linnell, one of the They Might Be Giant guys, has put out an album in Latin. It’s called Roman Songs, and you can find many on YouTube. Or click here to listen to “Hanc Quoque Est Res” (that this is also the case). (Side note, I [Em] have studied a lot of languages, including French, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Hebrew, German/Yiddish…and Ancient Greek is one of the most difficult. Also Russian.) 11/ Ben Jonson (1572–1637) was famously very good at Latin and Greek and very proud of this (hence his small dig at Shakespeare in a poem he wrote to honor Shakespeare!). 12/ Shakespeare’s father was a glove maker who used a fine white leather. See “whittawer.” 13/ N.B. Per the joke about crazy uncles: all my uncles are either not crazy or not on Facebook, which is pretty much the same thing. [Jesse: Yes, same!] 14/ See our episode 34 on Universities! 15/ Aristotle’s Politics Book 8. Here’s the Perseus project link to the translation (Politics 8.1340b). 16/ For the Roger Edgeworth complaint (preaching around 1539-40 in Bristol, England after the dissolution of the monasteries) see Nicholas Orme’s Medieval Children, p. 172. 17/ The scene we’re discussing from Margery Kempe’s Book (also The Book of Margery Kempe comes at the end of section 30, immediately before section 31. In the annotated edition edited by Barry Windeatt, see pp. 177–78. Here’s a Google Books link to the page: https://books.google.com/books?id=LypF-lv_ZXgC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=margery+kempe+baby+jesus+doll&source=bl&ots=GNoXQ97D8t&sig=Ltw40747l9-i7FvJcx2zc09MVeU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjvrfGCzbHfAhVCc98KHaEXA-EQ6AEwCHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=margery%20kempe%20baby%20jesus%20doll&f=false And here’s an Amazon link.

Summary Join Em and Dr. Jesse as we play a little game we like to call, “How Early in History Could Em Have Had Children and Survive?” The answer may surprise you! We also cover Mary’s girdle, (some of) the life and times of Dr. James Barry and Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, childbirth-related saints, the masculinization of obstetrics, and debunk a few myths about parental love in a time of high infant mortality. Annotations and Corrections 1/ One exhibit from the National Library of Medicine mentions a c-section in 1500 CE where the mother lived and went on to have five more children, and the baby lived to be 77 years old. In this case, the husband (who was a sow gelder) operated on his wife. However in other situations, the woman might live, but only for a month afterward, which I would call, mm, a qualified success at best. Jesse: Wow, I was off to a rocky start! They all died? Anyhow, James Barry (1789–1865) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Barry_(surgeon) For more on a trans individual potentially identifying as (or being identified as) intersex, see episode 26 note 14 on Eleno / Elena de Céspedes. See also Israel Burshatin, “Written on the body: slave or Hermaphrodite in sixteenth-century Spain” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999): 420–456. Episode 26 note 14 also mentions Brother Marinos (mentioned later in this podcast) and Herculine Barbin, who was intersex (female identified) and a lesbian. 2/ We talked about Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865) at some length in episode 2, I think! He’s not in the notes, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis 3/ For more on stones and lapidaries, see episode 26 (Valentine’s Day!) note 2. 4/ Saint Cyr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyricus_and_Julitta 5/ Saint Margaret of Antioch! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_the_Virgin Here are some great images: https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2014/07/enter-the-dragon-happy-st-margarets-day.html https://sites.nd.edu/manuscript-studies/2015/06/04/the-pearl-in-the-dragons-belly/ 6/ The Golden Legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Legend 7/ Cihuateteo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cihuateteo 8/ For more, see Monica Green’s Making Women’s Medicine Masculine (Amazon link). 9/ What Florence Nightingale actually wrote: “I never had such a blackguard rating in all my life – I who have had more than any woman – than from this Barry sitting on his horse, while I was crossing the Hospital Square with only my cap on in the sun. He kept me standing in the midst of quite a crowd of soldiers, Commissariat, servants, camp followers, etc., etc., every one of whom behaved like a gentleman during the scolding I received while he behaved like a brute . . . After he was dead, I was told that (Barry) was a woman . . . I should say that (Barry) was the most hardened creature I ever met.” (source) 10/ For the record, Henry VII and his wife (Elizabeth) had seven children. 11/ Here is the act we’re discussing (it’s working it’s way through congress): https://blackmaternalhealthcaucus-underwood.house.gov/Momnibus 12/ A clip from Conan’s podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend (they reference the guy who did her father’s birth certificate around 1:30–2:00 in, but don’t tell the whole story in this section; I believe this is the full episode this is excerpted from, and the whole story would be in there–plus he interviews Dave Grohl!) Also, in a statement on April 24, 2021 (Armenian Remembrance Day), Joe Biden referred to the Armenian genocide as a genocide! So that’s cool. 13/ Philippe Ariès was wrong, but here’s his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Ariès Em: I wish I could provide a link to the article I reference, but honestly I have no idea what it might have been. Chalk that one up to sleep deprivation stealing my memory. 14/ Nicholas Orme’s Medieval Children (Amazon link). 15/ Genesis 21:16 (Also in 21:8 Isaac is weaned!)

Synopsis We’ve just spent the month of June watching innumerable students progress across the stage in their long gowns. Where does the tradition of wearing black robes, mortarboards, and stoles/hoods as academic regalia come from? Hint: it’s the Middle Ages! Join Em and Jesse as we discuss the origins of universities (and some of the oldest ones) and learn about some of the earliest women scholars and professors. Annotations and Comments 1/ You can find out more about rules for academic dress at Oxford here and for Cambridge here–both still have several styles of academic gown that are worn for exams, ceremonies, concerts and presentations, festivals, and the like. You’ll note that the Cambridge version is so complex it requires a flow chart to help students determine which gown is most appropriate. Academic hoods! Also, you’ll notice that Hogwarts requires students to wear robes. Yes, this is because they’re wizards (although that style of dress is also based on medieval clothing), but it’s also because of English schools (the real ones, for Muggles). 2/ Spoiler alert: the whole Dr. Jill Biden thing pretty much died about two days later. 3/ “Why are (male) surgeons still addressed as Mr?” tl;dr: it’s because surgeons and physicians trained separately and only physicians were allowed to use “doctor.” This was a time when physicians were educated gentlemen and surgeons were people who cut off your arm if you needed it cut off. 4/ Plato’s Academy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy Aristotle’s Lyceum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyceum_(Classical) vs modern usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyceum 5/ As seen in the movies, the teachers at Hogwarts sit at the High Table. For more on the High Table tradition in academia in England, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_table 6/ Scholasticism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism Trivium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium Quadrivium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrivium The Phantom Tollbooth (GREAT BOOK!) https://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Tollbooth-Norton-Juster/dp/0394820371 The Jane Austen novels that treat on university educations and the clergy most directly are Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey. 7/ Universities and Schooling in Medieval Society, edited by William Courtenay and Jürgen Miethke, with the assistance of David Priest (Leiden: Brill, 2000). https://www.amazon.com/Universities-Schooling-Medieval-Society-Studies/dp/9004113517 8/ Joan of Arc was in episode 9. 9/ Relevant: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense 10/ True story about the two of us going to Italy in 2003(ish). I (Em) also threw up in a Cracker Barrel on this trip and have never been back to one. Uh. And then when we finally got to Italy, I think I lived on basically cappuccino and gelato. Somewhere I have a very small print of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, which was the painting that sticks out most in my mind of those we saw on the trip. Maybe that says a lot, because we also saw the Last Supper. 11/ Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Vesalius De humani corporis fabrica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_humani_corporis_fabrica 12/ Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia (1646–1684) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Cornaro_Piscopia 13/ Alessandro Macchiavelli (1693–1766) https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2015/pr-feminism-bologna-findlen-082415.html For more on all of the women mentioned here (and the forging) see Paula Findlen, “Inventing the Middle Ages: An Early Modern Forger Hiding in Plain Sight,” in For the Sake of Learning: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton Vol. 1. edited by Ann Blair and Anja-Silvia Goeing (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 871–896. Laura Bassi (1711–1778): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Bassi Actually, we say she lectured on “the liberal arts,” but specifically she was a physicist and mathematician! Specifically, she was super into Newtonian physics! And she married a (medical) doctor/fellow lecturer and had somewhere between eight and twelve children, five of whom lived to adulthood. She was the original working mom, is what I’m saying. #Goals 14/ Trotula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotula For more, see The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, edited and translated by Monica H. Green (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13496.html

Summary Part two of women as artisans. Join Em and Jesse as they discuss more about the work women did in the Middle Ages, including quite a lot about guilds and textiles, including spinning, embroidery, quilting, and silkworking. Find out which guilds accepted women, how were they treated, to what extent were they involved in local politics, and also some interesting notes about how Norwegian dried cod became popular among West African immigrants to the US. Annotations Recommended text for this episode: Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture edited by Therese Martin. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Maryanne Kowaleski and Judith M. Bennett, “Crafts, Gilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years after Marian K. Dale,” Signs 14.2 (Winter 1989): 474–501. Also recommended: Marian K. Dale, “The London Silkwomen of the Fifteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 1st ser., 4 (1933) 324–335. Kay Lacey, “The Production of ‘Narrow Ware’ by Silkwomen in Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century England,” Textile History 18.2 (1987): 187–204. For the London Guild ordinances discussed in this episode, see Frances Consitt, The London Weavers’ Company (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 1: 229–30, 292, 312–14, 320. 1/ We have probably linked to this before, but check out this video for more on the Lord Mayor of London and how to get the job. Of interest, although the city of London has been around since Roman times, the office of mayor has only existed since 1189 (it converted to lord mayor in 1354). Although now lord mayors do not serve multiple consecutive terms, the first-ever mayor of London, Sir Henry FitzAlan (aka Sir Henry fitz Ailwin de Londonstane), served 24 consecutive terms. 2/ For the female Viking warrior, see episode 20, note 11. Also https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-reaffirm-famed-ancient-viking-warrior-was-biologically-female-180971541/ Boudica (Iceni–i.e. British Celtic–queen in the first century CE who fought the Roman forces in Britain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica In her introduction to her new translation of Beowulf, Maria Dahvana Headley discusses women as warriors and the ways in which the assumptions of (male) scholars have hidden them. 3/ For more on silkworking and women in guilds in England, see Maryanne Kowaleski and Judith M. Bennett. “Crafts, Gilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years after Marian K. Dale,” Signs 14.2 (Winter 1989): 474–501. For the London Guild ordinances discussed, see Frances Consitt, The London Weavers’ Company (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 1: 229–30, 292, 312–14, 320. See also all articles referenced above! 4/ For more on the way women’s work is devalued (and on the fact that the entrance of women into a field can devalue it): https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html 5/ The women/men ratio comes from Kowaleski and Bennett (see above) and Maryanne Kowaleski, “The History of Urban Families in Medieval England,” Journal of Medieval History 14.1 (1988): 47–63, esp. 54–56. 6/ The information on women’s guilds in Europe comes largely from Kowaleski and Bennett (see above). 7/ The information on Ireland (and the value of a needle) is from Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh, “Mere Embroiderers? Women and Art in Early Medieval Ireland,” in Reassessing the Roles of Women, ed. Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012): 93–128, esp. 93. 8/ The information on the stole in Girona, Spain is from Pierre Alain Mariaux, “Women in the Making: Early Medieval Signatures and Artists’ Portraits (9th–12th c)” in Reassessing the Roles of Women, ed. Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012): 393–427, esp. 419. 9/ Gee’s Bend Quilts: https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-quiltmakers https://www.pbs.org/video/alabama-public-television-documentaries-quiltmakers-of-gees-bend/ 10/ Alisa LaGamma, “The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design without End,” African Arts 42.1 (Spring 2009): 88–99, esp. 90–91. The artist I mention is El Anatsui (b.1944, Ghanian): https://art21.org/artist/el-anatsui/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw2NyFBhDoARIsAMtHtZ77XuccoWzMzx-3uQgYcZUDdgfPm-qg6ilxCPvdWKtZ0Aczehc3Mn4aAsiZEALw_wcB You can check out Bisa Butler’s quilts on her Instagram here and at the Art Institute here. Kente cloth is specifically from Ghana; you can see a cool map of different fabrics of Africa here. 11/ For more on Yinka Shonibare, see episode 11, note 21 and episode 14, note 21. Also Google him! http://yinkashonibare.com/ For more on Dutch Wax Fabric (and Shonibare): https://hyperallergic.com/335472/how-dutch-wax-fabrics-became-a-mainstay-of-african-fashion/ 12/ Minnesota, dried fish (pre-lutefisk), and Nigerian immigrants: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/where-to-find-lutefisk For those not familiar, lutefisk is fish preserved with lye. Concerning cod. 13/ Wome

Summary Em and Jesse reminisce about libraries they have known, discuss scriptoria and book-making before the printing press, and talk about women who worked in various Medieval professional guilds, how they got there, and what they did with their money. Annotations and Corrections Recommended text for this episode: Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture. Edited by Therese Martin. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 1/ Things that are artisanal: bread, cheese, beer, anything made in Brooklyn. . . . 2/ Christmas Book Flood!! Or the Jolabokaflod. https://jolabokaflod.org/about/founding-story/ https://www.countryliving.com/life/a46204/jolabokaflod-iceland-christmas-reading-tradition/ 3/ The relationship between Finnish and Hungarian is actually pretty complicated. The Finno-Uralic language family has nine language groupings in it; the major languages are, in order of number of speakers, Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, and then a bunch of minority languages that are spoken by very small groups (tribes, I guess), like Mari, Udmurt, Mordvin, and so on. These languages have some structural, lexicographical, and phonetic similarities, but how they’re actually related is still a subject of debate, as is the question of how they might be related to other Indo-European (or non-Indo-European languages). There are also linguists who claim that these are all just a bunch of weird languages that got stuck together and they’re not actually related, as well as weird theories that propose Finnish is related to Basque (probably the most famous isolate) or Hungarian is related to Etruscan. 4/ The movie was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Good movie, but, uh, wow. Some uncomfortable stuff in there, made more awkward because I was watching it in a kind of art house movie theatre with mostly a bunch of Boomers. . . . 5/ DIY Quarto https://www.folger.edu/publishing-shakespeare/diy-quarto 6/ This site has some examples of different handwriting styles. Palaeography is the study of historic writing, handwriting systems, etc. We’re discussing medieval Palaeography! For more on cats, scribes, and their fights, see episode 30 (especially notes 12 and 13), and also this blog: https://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/paws-pee-and-mice-cats-among-medieval-manuscripts/ A palimpsest is text that’s hidden (invisible to the naked eye) under another text that’s been written over it. Modern technology (ultraviolet light/photography) has made palimpsests visible again without damaging the surface text. 7/ Luttrell Psalter (BL MS 42130): Here’s a link to f157r (that’s the front–recto–of page/leaf 157). Click forward to see amazing and delightful scenes from the Luttrell village, or backwards to see animals and Biblical scenes, and fantastic illuminations. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_42130_f157r Here is the link to f. 202v (that’s the back of page/leaf 202): “A knight with the Luttrell arms, mounted, armed, and attended by two women identified by their heraldic surcoats as Agnes Sutton (d. 1340) and Beatrice Le Scrope (the wife and the daughter-in-law of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell)” according to the British Library description. The knight is presumably Sir Geoffrey himself (with his wife and daughter-in-law, yay). http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_42130_f202v See episode 8 note 24 for all the great info on the Master of Catherine of Cleves (active ca. 1435–60). Here’s the Morgan Library’s website on The Hours of Catherine of Cleves: https://www.themorgan.org/collection/Hours-of-Catherine-of-Cleves Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry: This was created by the Limbourg Brothers. The Lindisfarne Gospels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindisfarne_Gospels (Created by Eadfrith, who became Bishop of Lindisfarne.) 8/ Extensive reading: reading a lot of books. Intensive reading: reading one book really closely (many people read their bible this way, whatever their religion is). 9/Hildegard’s Ordo Virtutum was discussed in episode 6 (see notes 17 and 23). 10/ For more on women as illuminators, see Christine Havice, “Women and the Production of Art in the Middle Ages,” in Double Vision: Perspectives on Gender and the Visual Arts. Edited by Natalie Harris Bluestone. Associated University Presses, 1995. Pages 67–94. Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture, edited by Therese Martin. Leiden: Brill, 2012. For more on the nuns of St Katharine’s in Nuremberg, see Jane Carroll, “Subversive Obedience: Images of Spiritual Reform by and for Fifteenth-Century Nuns,” in Reassessing the Roles, ed. Martin pp. 705–737. (Full cite of Martin’s above.) For more on Donella, see Loretta Vandi, “‘The Woman with the Flower.’ Social and Artistic Identity in Medieval Italy,” in Gesta 39.1 (2000): 73–77. For more

Summary From Groundhog Day to Hocktide to May Day to Midsummer to Mother’s Day, there are a ton of spring holidays! Join Em and Jesse as we discuss St. George and Medieval dragons, Saint Walpurga and Walpurgisnacht, Pagan syncretism, and a whole lot more. With some digressions about brunch. Annotations and Corrections 1/ Groundhog Day is really about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw63_YyNsF4 We are posting this on Friday, 4/23. There was snow in Wisconsin (and around the country) earlier this week. Yay, spring. 2/ Hocktide! Check out Katherine L. French, “‘To Free Them from Binding’: Women in the Late Medieval English Parish,” in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Winter, 1997); pp. 387–412. Also see David N. Klausner (ed.), Record of Early English Drama (REED): Herefordshire and Worcestershire (Toronto, I990), 349–350, 553–554. 3/ St George! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George Philip Butterworth, “Late Medieval Performing Dragons” in The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 43: Early English Drama (2013), pp. 318–342. dePaola, Tomie. The Knight and the Dragon. Puffin Books, 1998. Amazon link. Sadly, Tomie dePaola died at the age of 85 approximately one year ago (March 30, 2020). 4/ Here is the Dragon Chariot in the Luttrell Psalter (BL MS 42130 f184r): http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_42130_f184r Here is the print made “after” (he didn’t make the engraving himself) Bruegel the elder’s c1559 De beurs op St. George dagen [aka The Fair of St George’s Day] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Fair_of_Saint_George%27s_Day_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg [Click on the image to zoom in just a little above left of center for the Dragon Wagon!] 5/ John Babington’s Pyrotechnia (1635) (discussed in Butterworth’s essay) https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/345291 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Babington_(mathematician) 6/ Norwich’s dragon, Snap! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edyVLlzAMxs 7/ May Day! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day Beltane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane 8/ Floralia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floralia Pliny the Elder’s text in Latin (Natural History, book 18, section 286–scroll down!): http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/18*.html Here is the translation from Perseus Project, where it’s Book 18.69 (middle of the fourth paragraph): https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plin.+Nat.+18.69&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137 9/ Saint Walpurga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Walpurga Walpurgisnacht https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walpurgis_Night 10/ Robert Grosseteste (c1168–1253) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Grosseteste Grosseteste’s complaints about Maying can be found in E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols (London, 1903), 1: 91. Bruce Moore discusses Maying and Chaucer in “‘Allone, Withouten Any Compaignye:’ The Mayings in Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale,'” in The Chaucer Review, Spring, 1991, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Spring, 1991), pp. 285–301. 11/ Maypole! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maypole Susan Crane Performance of the Self https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13751.html 12/ Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Lysander in I.i and Theseus in IV.i See also the Valentine’s Day episode (episode 26)! 13/ Adam de la Halle (1240–1287) wrote a brilliant Robin and Marion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeu_de_Robin_et_Marion Spotify links to the music of Adam de la Halle’s Robin and Marion: https://open.spotify.com/album/1kBSiEHtnA2rwbhcds4npW?si=2aRu65MwQiGP7BiHiSbtdw https://open.spotify.com/album/7dmIdo5biRHkicdEusfaTW?si=f14m4JGBSrGtDGRBruvdVA For posterity, “Honey I Love You” is played like this: Person A sits on Person B’s lap. (Can you tell this is a pre-COVID game?) Person A leans face close to Person B and says, “Honey, if you love me, would you please, please smile?” in as beguiling a manner as possible. Person B’s job is to reply, “Honey, I love you, but I just can’t smile” without breaking. If Person B starts to smile or laugh, they have to become the sitter and Person A is allowed to rejoin the crowd. Bryn Mawr’s May Day Celebration: https://www.brynmawr.edu/activities/traditions (scroll down just a hair) 14/ For more on alcohol, see Episode 27! Amusingly, and possibly related to Em’s rant about Mother’s Day, this was the first episode we recorded after Em had a baby. King Bhumibol, also known as Rama IX, ascended the throne in 1946 and was coronated in 1950, just about three years before Elizabeth II did the same on the other side of the world. Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee was celebrated in 2012. Long the longest-reigning female monarch and longest-reigning British monarch, she became the l

Summary Cats are tiny lions that live in your home. But how long have they lived with humans? Have they always had the position of respect they enjoy now? Also, what’s up with racoons? Em and Jesse discuss cats in the Middle Ages (and also other animals kept as pets, including squirrels, monkeys, and birds). We explore various poetic odes to cats written through the ages (real and apocryphal), examples of cats getting into trouble in scriptoria, and also a few digressions on James Joyce. Annotations 0/ Title ref. 1/ Ghostbusters (Dr. Venkman): “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together–mass hysteria!” https://youtu.be/SA1SxZoFmOU 2/ Cat domestication! https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/domesticated-cats-dna-genetics-pets-science 3/ CBS Sunday Morning “Are we making racoons smarter?” https://youtu.be/CnZ-8cVxhNA Racoon GEICO commercial (there are many, here is one): https://youtu.be/gUpMoNMlCts Interesting fact: in cities, where there is abundant food for animals like racoons and opossums, the animals start breeding year-round, rather than seasonally. 4/ Caitlin Doughty’s Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death https://www.amazon.com/Will-Cat-Eat-Eyeballs-Questions/dp/039365270X Interview with Doughty: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/09/10/mortician-death-caitlin-doughty-book Webcomic Strange Planet: “Who’s a moral creature?” (i.e., dogs!) https://twitter.com/nathanwpyle/status/1233112182126235649?s=20 Strange Planet‘s vibrating creature (i.e., cat): https://twitter.com/nathanwpyle/status/1107432804822994944?s=20 Strange Planet illuminates the way we stereotypically view dogs (companions, loyal, “good” in a truly moral sense) vs the way we stereotypically view cats (aloof, solitary, untamed, amoral). 5/ Anchoresses: episode 5, especially note 3. 6/ Irina Metzler, “Heretical Cats: Animal Symbolism in Religious Discourse,” in Medium Aevum Quotidianum, vol. 59 (2009): 16–32. These stories of the cat as symbolic of the devil are from pp. 18–19. Here is a 14th century image of the poor widow surrounded by angels and the rich man surrounded by cats (representing the evils of his life, panderers and flatterers, etc). The image is in Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 312, f. 334v. The illuminator is Pierre Remiet, and the text is Vincent de Beauvais, Miroir Historial [Speculum historiale], vol. 1, 2, 4, traduction en français par Jean de Vignay. Miroir historial, vol. 1, Livres I–VIII. See also Michael Camille, Master of Death, which is about the illuminator Remiet. This image appears in Camille on p. 157. 7/ For more on Hildegard and dogs, check out episode 29 note 27. 8/ Alain of Lille (c.1128–c.1202/3): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Lille Cathars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism See also Metzler, p. 24. 9/ Dominicans! A dog statue in Marburg, Germany stands on a building that pre-Reformation was a Domincan monastery. This good pup is illustrating that the Dominicans are “domini canes” or “hounds of the Lord.” The fresco “The Church Militant and Church Triumphant” in Santa Maria Novella in Florence (1365) by Andrea di Bonaiuto. Here’s a close up: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Andrea_di_Bonaiuto._Santa_Maria_Novella_1366-7_fresco_0011.jpg Andrea di Bonaiuto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_di_Bonaiuto_da_Firenze 10/ For awesome dog figurines, see episode 29 note 9. For medieval cats licking themselves, there are many internet threads such as https://www.sadanduseless.com/funny-medieval-art/ (we are linking this for the images, not the text on the blog post!). 11/ Pietro Lorenzetti’s Last Supper in the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi (lower church): https://www.wga.hu/html_m/l/lorenzet/pietro/1/1vault/2lastsu.html (click on the image for a close up!) Pietro Lorenzetti (c.1280–1348) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Lorenzetti 12/ Cats paw prints on a manuscript! https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/130326-animals-medieval-manuscript-books-cats-history https://www.openculture.com/2014/01/medieval-cats-behaving-badly.html 13/ Medieval cat pee on a manuscript! https://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/paws-pee-and-mice-cats-among-medieval-manuscripts/ (scroll down past the paw prints image) 14/ The Librarians (TV series!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Librarians_(2014_TV_series) 15/ Students from the Rochester Institute of Technology created an imaging system: https://www.rit.edu/news/rit-students-discover-hidden-15th-century-text-medieval-manuscripts Since this episode was recorded, a paper came out in Nature about using computers to virtually unfold complexly folded letters from pre-1830 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21326-w). 16/ Christopher Smart (1722–1771) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Smart Long poem Jubilate Agno https:

Synopsis Dogs have long been reputed to be man’s best friend. But how long is “long”? The answer is close to 10,000 years (at least). Join Em and Jesse as they look back at the intertwined history of humanity and canine-ity, from Odysseus’s dog Argos to Hachiko, who waited ten years for his owner to come home from work. With some interesting discussions of famous medieval animals, including Alfonso the Wise’s pet weasel and Chanticleer the rooster. A lady with dogs from the Alphonso Psalter, c. 1284-1316 (Add MS 24686, British Library). Annotations and Corrections 1/ 1:33 I sound confused about llamas . . . I think I am poorly remembering an argument from Guns, Germs, and Steel. [Some interesting context for Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/03/guns-germs-and-steel-reconsidered –Jesse] 2/ 2:08 Talking smack about André [Awwwwwwww.-Jesse] He can be kind of a jerk, but he’s also very nice when he wants to be.   3/ Our alcohol episode was episode 27. 4/ 7:08 Here is the Wikipedia article about the famous silver fox domestication experiment: 5/ If you’re interested in hunting, check out the famous medieval hunting manuscript Le Livre de chasse written by Gaston Phoebus (Gaston III, Count of Foix) between 1387 and 1389. This text was translated and adapted into English as The Master of Game by Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York between 1406 and 1413. 6/ 10:11 Turnspit dogs! In England, they’re mentioned at least as early as John Caius’s 1570 De canibus Britannicis (On English Dogs) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_dog 7/ There are many references to cats and dogs in the Talmud! Here is the one Em is discussing, and in true Jewish scholarly fashion, there are two possible sayings: 1) don’t go barefoot in a house with a cat because you’ll puncture your foot with the small bones of the snakes it has killed, and 2) don’t go go into a house without a cat in the dark because there might be snakes that will get you. “Rav Pappa said: With regard to a house in which there is a cat, a person should not enter there barefoot. What is the reason? Because the cat might kill a snake and eat it, and the snake has small bones, and if a small bone gets into one’s foot it cannot be removed, and he will be in danger. Some say that Rav Pappa said: With regard to a house in which there is no cat, a person should not enter there in the dark. What is the reason? Since there is no cat to hunt snakes, perhaps a snake will wrap itself around him without him knowing and he will be in danger.” (Pesachim 112b:10) Here is a general romp through Talmudic references to cats: https://www.sefaria.org/topics/cats?tab=sources 8/ 12:03 Anchoresses could have cats: see episode 5 (especially note 3). Domestication of dogs! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-wolves-really-became-dogs-180970014/ https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03053-2 9/ 14:58 Pompeii “Beware the Dog” mosaic! Roman doggo statue (copy of a lost Greek statue): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molossus_(dog)#/media/File:Molossian_Hound,_British_Museum.jpg Another Roman doggo: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/255121 Greek or Roman girl with puppy: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/248754 Greek doggo guarding owner’s tomb (in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens–Jesse can personally attest to this good doggo’s awesomeness). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Funerary_statue_of_a_dog_at_the_National_Archaeological_Museum_of_Athens_on_7_May_2018.jpg Good Chinese doggos: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/42361 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pottery_dogs,_Han_Dynasty.JPG Pre-Columbian American doggos: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/318964 https://ncartmuseum.org/art/detail/dog_effigy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pot-bellied_Dog_Figure,_Mexico,_State_of_Colima,_200_BC_-_500_AD,_ceramic,_Pre-Columbian_collection,_Worcester_Art_Museum_-_IMG_7646.JPG Neo-Assyrian doggos: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1856-0903-1509 Some of the oldest depictions of dogs, from Iran: https://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-9345_2007_num_33_1_5213 Possibly even older depictions of dogs from Saudi Arabia: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/8000-year-old-rock-carvings-may-be-earliest-depiction-domesticated-dogs-180967266/ More dogs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_dogs 10/ 17:28 Historic dogs vs modern–you’ll notice that lots of the breeds in note 9 are referenced as “extinct” while still looking very recognizable! You can see a bunch of comparison photos from the early 20th century here. 11/ 19:08 Sorry about the eye thing! HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel did a great story on dog breed (“Unnatural Selection”) in season 20 epis

Summary Hungry? Grab a snack and join Em and Jesse for a discussion of food in the Middle Ages–what did a well-equipped kitchen contain? What kind of dishes were cooked, with what ingredients? And who did the cooking and baking? With some digressions on international variations of hand pies and sandwiches, Wisconsin fish fries, and some modern recreations of Medieval recipes. Annotations and Corrections 1/ [0:56] For more on the eucharist, check out episode 3 (on Passover and Easter) and episode 6 (especially the long section on the feast of Corpus Christi). Caroline Bynum’s Holy Feast, Holy Fast. Amazon link. 2/ [5:45] We recorded this on a different day than usual, and for some reason three or four trains went by Dr. Jesse’s house in less than an hour and a half. [I love trains! We’ve got both freight and Amtrak. Invest in train travel!–JN] 3/ [8:30] Actually, my research suggests that the German immigrants who came to Wisconsin were Catholics, so that is where the fish fry tradition came from.–Em 4/ [9:45] Dr. Jesse alludes to the fact that in the laws of Kashrut, fish is considered pareve, meaning it can be eaten with both meat dishes or dairy dishes. (This means specifically fish–not seafood like shrimp or clams.) 5/ [11:00] The Seal of New York City: BEWARE stereotypical/racist Native American imagery! We are linking to the image for the beavers. And the Wikipedia article is here. As of July 2020, Bill de Blasio was in favor of a commission to rethink the seal. 6/ [15:00] The Chester Harrowing is discussed in episode 8 note 26 and episode 27 note 18 [1:02:03]. 7/ [16:40] Hrotsvit has come up several times, but the best place to look for more on her is in her own episode, which was number 22. 8/ Chaucer’s Cook: Here’s the description of the Cook in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales (lines 379–387). You can also link to the Cook’s Tale from here (sidebar on the left). 9/ [24:20] An Aga is basically a cast iron box that gets hot slowly and then stays hot for a long time. They seem to use a lot of fuel, and (consequently?) they are very posh in Britain. Here’s a nice blog on hearths and ovens. 10/ [24:30] Maggie Walker came up in episode 10 (note 2), Icons and Iconography. I don’t know who’s blog this is, but if you scroll down you’ll see a picture of the kitchen with the stove (and the kitchen table with an awesome yellow checkered tablecloth). 11/ [30:10] For the frequency (or lack thereof) of communion, see Miri Rubin’s Corpus Christi esp. pp. 147–148. Amazon link. 12/ [31:20] Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381, by Steven Justice. Amazon link. 13/ [32:30] For a lot of the specific information in this episode from utensils to foodstuffs, I recommend Melitta Weiss Adamson’s Food in Medieval Times. For the possibility of roasting a whole ox on a spit, see Adamson, bottom of page 60. 14/ [34:51] Spoons: we don’t talk about it a lot, but I think it’s interesting to mention that spoons and knives existed for quite a while before the idea of having your own personal flatware for eating with at a meal became a thing.–Em 15/ [35:40] Making cheese is pretty easy–bring a gallon of, for example, goat’s milk to a simmer, add some salt and lemon juice, strain out the curds and squeeze out the liquid. Boom, you have chevre. (If you do this with cow’s milk and don’t squeeze out too much liquid, you have ricotta.) However, making really good cheese is much more complicated and can involve different types of rennet, starters, kneading, aging, etc. [Cheese is one of humanity’s greatest discoveries!–JN] 16/ [36:45] Weird Al’s Amish Paradise. (Also note the call out to Buster Keaton with the wall falling over Weird Al. We discussed Buster Keaton in episode 22 note 2–including the falling house façade–and in episode 21, note 3.) 17/ [38:00] Soap tho? [The Middle Ages had soap! It was made using tallow and lots of lye, generally speaking.–JN] 18/ [41:00] Somehow, suggesting that a pastie and a taco are essentially the same thing is like suggesting that a Pop Tart is a kind of ravioli–technically correct, but likely to start a fight. [Food fight!!–JN] 19/ [42:15] Banh mi: apparently, “banh” as a corruption of “pain” or “banh mi” as a version of “pain de mie” is a folk etymology, and the use of “banh” to mean a type of rice cake (like banh Tet) dates to the 13th century. It is written in Nom (Vietnamese Chinese characters) with 餅, pronounced “bing” in Mandarin! “Mi” means “wheat.” “Pho mai” DOES actually come from “fromage,” and inevitably meant Vache Qui Rie (Laughing Cow) brand cheese. The term “banh mi” is used to mean a sandwich, I believe, in the US and other places that aren’t VN. This is

Summary Welcome to season 2! Grab your favorite potation and join Em and Jesse for a tour of the history of alcohol, from monkeys getting drunk on fermented apples, to the earliest written recipe for beer, to rules surrounding the making and serving of drinks in the Middle Ages. With some fun digressions on the domestication of watermelons and the importance of grain/flour in Gilgamesh. Annotations 1/ Narrator: By ‘drink,’ Ford Prefect meant alcohol. . . To be clear, the cans of old fashioned the Dane is offering have like four servings in them (obligatory “or one serving if you try hard enough”). Having been pregnant for most of 2020, I have not yet tried them. Anyway, per Wisconsin rules a brandy old fashioned consists of: a cherry + orange slice muddled in the bottom of the glass with sugar and bitters, a shot of brandy (probably usually Korbel), ice, and top it off with some type of lemon-lime soda (Em uses ginger beer). Garnish with additional cherries and an orange slice. I’ve had bartenders in not-Wisconsin give it to me without the soda, which is–not good. I’ve heard that Wisconsin consumes the most brandy per capita in the US. Actually, in 2019, Wisconsinites consumed over half of the Korbel brandy sold worldwide. So. That’s a claim to fame for sure. Our recommended nonalcoholic drink to go with this episode is ginger beer and lime. 2/ In contrast to the aquatic ape theory, I’m calling Dr. Jesse’s theory about the fermented apple-eating monkeys the drunken monkey theory, and no one can stop me. [Awesome!–JN] Jesse: Here is a a great beginning article on the history of alcohol from National Geographic, “A 9,000-Year Love Affair,” by Andrew Curry, Feb 2017, vol. 231, no. 2: link. Many of the specific dates, recipes, and general info discussed in this episode are at least briefly mentioned in this article. (May require a subscription.) Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the history of alcoholic drinks. 3/ [8:32] “I know enough that if you want to have a city, which means that…people have specializations in things…” This insight and many others brought to you by Ryan North’s How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler. I am having a hard time finding anything on Google that isn’t about c-rations eaten by soldiers during the Vietnam War–most of what I know about post-war rationing I learned from museums I visited in the country. I remember one exhibit that talked about how people had coupon books for rice, meat, vegetables, and tofu, and how people who traveled abroad often brought back items like electric fans, and I think sneakers and radios. I feel like one guy mentioned trading a pair of sneakers for a plane ticket. 4/ [15:27] The Harappan or Indus script. I’m guessing they’d have to find a longer text using the script to really decipher it, but you can read about all the arguments on that page. And here’s more on cuneiform, including a nice view of the evolution from pictograms (which I believe count as proto-writing) to the actual script. 5/ [18:05] Bai jiu (白酒) is actually usually made from sorghum, although some regions do use rice or other grains. It’s a pretty ubiquitous spirit in China. Wikipedia has a pretty good rundown of all the varieties beyond the cheap to extremely cheap stuff you can buy in the supermarket in China. 6/ [22:50] The domestication of the watermelon in ancient Egypt. And here is the recent discovery via DNA that Egyptians had domesticated a sweet (probably red) watermelon. 7/ [24:45] Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. 8/ [29:30] Sumerian beer: the recipe is here if you want to try it yourself. Google turns up a number of people/groups that have done it. Here is more on the goddess Ninkasi. 9/ [33:35] Gilgamesh is my favorite epic–we’ve talked about it in several previous episodes, notably 3 (note 27) and 23 (note 5). Not only does bread figure into a major plot point, but flour is used in conjuring when Gilgamesh has a series of prophetic dreams when Gilgamesh and Enkidu walk to the cedar forest in tablet 4. A song about the Mesopotamians. Possibly not very explanatory. Nineveh, for those not raised in the Jewish tradition (Abrahamic tradition?), is the city the prophet Jonah is sent to with orders to tell them to repent. Ashurbanipal and his library. 10/ [38:35] Unfortunately, the Wikipedia entry for Tall Bazi, Syria is in German. Here is a beer recipe based on the archeological evidence from Tall Bazi. 11/ [41:45] We talked about the building of the pyramids in our episodes on Passover and Easter (see episode 3 notes 3 and 5). Here is a website about the village, and here is the site’s article on feeding the workers (with a particular emphasis on the bakeries). For more on the history of beer, see Richard Unger Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Chapter 2 opens with a section c

Summary “Wuv… twue wuv…will follow you fowever…” Interested in a brief history of Valentine’s Day? You’re in luck. From the question of who was the historical saint to when the day became associated with romance, Em and Jesse start with ancient Roman fertility festivals like Lupercalia and trace the rituals forward through to references in Chaucer and Shakespeare. From cis to trans, straight to gay and everything in between, we have the info you’re interested in. Annotations and Corrections 1/ Correction: you actually can use the frozen ganache in the center trick for chocolate-based chocolate lava cakes too. See this video and also this one that has both versions. 2/ St. Valentine, the 3rd century bishop. Interestingly, he is also the patron saint of the plague. And the island of Lesbos. [Lots of saints are patrons of plague (plague sufferers, that is). I think we’ve spent the past year learning why so many saints were needed in this specialty. St. Sebastian is among the most well known–his near death from arrows is probably the reason why he’s connected to plague. Apollo was the god of healing and plague, and he shot arrows at people/places to send plague. The connection between arrows and plague stuck around in early Christianity, and Sebastian is shot full of arrows. (Although this isn’t how he actually dies; he’s ultimately beaten to death). We talked about St. Sebastian in our plague episode–see episode 2, note 36.–Jesse] This site has some information on the meanings of gemstones in the Medieval period, and so does this blog post from the British Museum. Also here. Jesse: Medieval lapidaries (a lapidary is a book about the properties of stones and gems) were very common. If you’re looking for scholarly sources that will take you far more in-depth than the above websites, I recommend Katelyn Mesler’s article “The Medieval Lapidary of Techel/Azareus on Engraved Stones and Its Jewish Appropriations,” in Aleph 14.2. (2014): 75–143. The article is about the Jewish influence on a popular Christian lapidary, and it also has numerous great sources in the notes and citations. 3/ [11:30] “No one had come up with the idea of being tolerant of other religions…” Genghis Khan was apparently very tolerant of religious differences as long as you gave over enough loot. But he wouldn’t be around for almost another thousand years. 4/ Lupercalia (see the section “Name” for more on Februa.) Monty Python: putting things on top of other things Candlemas The redemption of the firstborn is kind of discussed in a couple of places in the Torah and also in Jewish law–basically, if you have a son and you don’t want him to be a priest, you give five silver shekels to a kohen (priestly class–we’ve discussed this a little bit before). Interestingly (for my children at least), if the son is born by c-section, you don’t have to redeem them. I don’t know why. [Weird! –Jesse] 5/ Parlement of Foules, by Geoffrey Chaucer. (This website also references the Paston letters, as does the site referenced here: The Paston Letters.) For this was on seynt Volantynys day Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make Of euery kynde that men thinke may And that so heuge a noyse gan they make That erthe & eyr & tre & euery lake So ful was that onethe was there space For me to stonde, so ful was al the place.” In modern English: For this was on Saint Valentine’s Day When every bird comes there to choose his match (Of every kind that men may think of!), And that so huge a noise they began to make That earth and air and tree and every lake Was so full, that not easily was there space For me to stand—so full was all the place. 6/ Charles, Duke of Orleans wrote the poem “A Farewell to Love” to his wife from his prison after being captured in the Battle of Agincourt. Charles was kept in England for about 25 years. The poem above was written to his second wife, who died before his return to France (his first wife had died in childbirth). 7/ From Hamlet, act IV, scene 5: To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes, And dupp’d the chamber-door; Let in the maid, that out a maid Never departed more. From A Midsummer Night’s Dream, act IV, scene 1: Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past: Begin these wood-birds but to couple now? 7/ [27:30] What can I say? Dr. Jesse really likes penguins. [I do!!!!–Jesse] Wisconsin is literally knee-deep in snow right now. The book about the gay penguin couple is And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, with illustrations by Henry Cole. Also this: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/gay-penguin-power-couple-fostering-second-egg-sydney-aquari

Synopsis Jews in space? No, Jews on stage. What was the world like for Jewish actors during the Middle Ages? Well, it was a bit of a mixed bag, honestly. Yes, there were times and places where Jewish life was severely proscribed, but there were also places where Jewish actors and playwrights were celebrated for their skills and performed at the highest echelons. Join Em and Jesse as they discuss the world of Jewish theater from the Middle Ages up to the mid-twentieth century. Also we talk about The Merchant of Venice some more, because of course we do. Annotations and Corrections 1/ Outside of Israel, a number of holidays are celebrated for two nights so that people can be sure of celebrating them during the time when they’re celebrated in Israel. 2/ Re the revolution: I think we won? Hopefully, you still have power and an RSS feed to be able to listen to this podcast. 3/ If you’re interested in Yiddish theater, check this out. 4/ Yiddish is mostly spoken by Haredi and Hasidic Jews. I don’t have a great source for how many Yiddish speakers there are worldwide right now. One source says at least 150,000 in the US and Canada. I assume 90% of them live in Brooklyn and the rest in Montreal. 5/ Indecent on PBS. Indecent by Paula Vogel: https://www.amazon.com/Indecent-TCG-Paula-Vogel/dp/1559365471 Indecent is available on broadwayhd.com: https://www.broadwayhd.com/categories/plays and sometime available via PBS https://www.pbs.org/video/indecent-zvm9ct/ Info on Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance here: https://web.uwm.edu/yiddish-stage/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-god-of-vengeance and here (includes an image of the entire cast after their arrest for obscenity): https://www.jewishboston.com/read/sholem-aschs-god-of-vengeance-challenges-modern-theater-audiences/ Info on the obscenity trial here (includes images of the complete pamphlet published in defense of God of Vengeance): https://web.uwm.edu/yiddish-stage/an-open-letter-by-sholom-asch-author-of-got-fun-nekome and here: https://news.yale.edu/2015/10/15/defending-indecent-play-god-vengeance-yale-university-library-archives-0 5/ Jewish wizards in Harry Potter = Anthony Goldstein (Ravenclaw) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/17/jk-rowling-confirms-that-there-were-jewish-wizards-harry-potter 6/ Erith Jaffe-Berg, “Performance as exchange: Taxation and Jewish Theater in Early Modern Italy” in Theatre Survey 54.3 (Sept 2013): 389–417. 7/ Leone de Sommi (c.1527–c.1592) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leone_de%27_Sommi 8/ At least one high profile case of a Jewish child secretly baptized was the Mortara case, which actually happened later on, in the 1850s. The Church held that it had the authority to remove the child based on the papal bull Postremo mense, which was written by Pope Benedict XIV in 1747 and lays out the guidelines under which it is allowable to baptize a Jewish child without its parents’ consent. The Church was still doing this as of WWII. In Australia: The Stolen Generation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations In the US: https://www.vox.com/2019/10/14/20913408/us-stole-thousands-of-native-american-children In Canada: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/06/decades-after-government-seizure-of-children-indigenous-canadians-will-receive-compensation In Canada, there used to be laws specifying that once a person had less than a certain percentage of tribal blood (possibly 25%), they could no longer register as part of a tribe. Since a fair number of people marry outside of the tribe, this would have the effect of shrinking the tribal membership relatively quickly. [These are known as “Blood Quantum” laws, and the USA has them as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_quantum_laws Here’s an interesting discussion of Canada: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/josiah-wilson-indian-act-hereditary-governance-1.3668636 –Jesse] [I think the Canadian laws are also discussed in Thomas King’s excellent The Truth About Stories.–Em] 9/ Jesse: This specific discussion of sumptuary laws is taken from Jaffe-Ber’s article (especially p. 392). We’ve previously mentioned Sara Lipton’s Dark Mirror, which is a great resource. 10/ It’s good to be the king (NSFW). 11/ Recommending Geraldine Heng’s The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Race-European-Middle-Ages/dp/1108435092/ 12/ Em: When I say my skin is clear, I don’t mean “unblemished,” I mean it’s see-through. 13/ Jesse: Our discussion is based largely on Ötzi, who was discovered in 2012 to be most closely related to modern-day Sardinians but also closely related to prehistoric remains from Bulgaria and Sweden. https://www.livescience.com/24667-iceman-mummy-otzi-closest-relatives.html However in 2013, it was discovered that Ötzi has at least 19 close genetic relatives *still living* in the Austrian Tyrol region (where he mi

Synopsis Em and Jesse discuss physical performance spaces, from Greek amphitheaters to pageant carts to prosceniums, and the changes theaters have seen over time. There’s a lot of Renaissance stuff in here, including an interesting discussion of the various theaters Shakespeare would have premiered plays–the Globe and the Rose–with some interesting digressions about the Blues Brothers, American Realism, and also the Bishop of Winchester and the area of Southwark known as the Liberty of the Clink. Annotations and Corrections 1/ Hrotsvit was indeed episode 22. 2/ They shout at each other on someone’s lawn because doing the histories is less risky than doing the comedies, as I understand it (of which everyone has their specific favorite). The histories generally involve a lot of shouting. 3/ Bob’s Country Roadhouse: we got both types of music–country AND western. I assume the bottles thrown after they start singing “Rawhide” are appreciative bottles. Jesse: We forgot to mention that animals can also show up at outdoor theatres (Bats! Racoons!). This definitely adds to the participatory “all-in-this-together” feeling and serves as a nice reminder that the environment can’t be controlled. Also, the most famous medieval theatre fire is probably this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_des_Ardents 4/ A surprising number of early indoor theatres still exist. The earliest extant indoor theatres of modern Western Europe are in Italy. (“Modern” in this instance means after the fall of Rome, and “indoor theatre” specifies a space built specifically for performance.) 1580–85: Teatro Olimpico, Vicienza 1588–90: Teatro all’Antica, Sabbioneta 1617–18: Theatre Farnese, Parma Proscenium style: from the Greek “pro skene,” in front of the scenery. The oldest theatre, Teatro Olimpico, has a permanent skene with perspective scenery visible through the arches: it can be seen here. Here’s the floor plan, where you can see the paths for the Teatro Olimpico’s perspective scenery. The entire back half of the stage is for the scenery and the skene. 5/ Later Baroque theatres such as Sweden’s Drottningholm Palace Theatre (opened 1754, rebuilt 1764-66) allowed actors to go a little upstage into the scenery without ruining the perspective. Nonetheless, actors tended to remain downstage, particularly on what we would now consider the apron (the small part of the stage that thrusts out in front of the proscenium arch). Here are some floor plans. Here’s a GREAT video of the scenery changing at the Drottningholm Palace Theatre! You even see how they change it backstage (no computers or mechanization!). Český Krumlov Castle Theatre (1767) in the Czech Republic is also an excellent example of a Baroque theatre. The video on this page has a lot of fun stills, including some of waves like those promoted by Nicola Sabbatini (1574–1654). See also this page (Sabbatini also used periaktoi, or triangular set pieces that could change scenery quickly. Very brief video here. This video shows the Český Krumlov Castle Theatre scenery changing at 3:16. If you watch the complete video, you’ll notice that the dancer never goes very far upstage. Here’s another video from the Český Krumlov Castle Theatre–the scenery changes at 10:45. You’ll notice that the scenery isn’t used to create a perspective, and the actors do make use of the upstage space. A cloud descends at 13:49. 6/ Bertolt Brecht, 1898–1956. 7/ The Theatre, built by James Burbage. Built in 1576, it’s not technically the very first purpose built theatre in England, but it’s the one that lasts. Burbage’s brother-in-law, John Brayne, built the actual first purpose-built theatre (the Red Lion) in 1567, but it was not successful. 8/ A Hark, a Vagrant! Comic about Richard III. An article about the identification of his body from 2013. His bones were discovered in 2012 and reinterred in 2015. (Richard III was buried in Greyfriars, which was Franciscan and was dissolved in 1538 by Henry VIII.–Jesse) The Rose. In Shakespeare in Love, we meet Richard Burbage (played by Martin Clunes) and, as Jesse mentions, Philip Henslowe (played by Geoffrey Rush). We don’t meet Cuthbert Burbage. 9/ I think I thought the stage was taller because whenever a tv show (Good Omens comes to mind) shoots in there, they shoot the actors on stage at an angle that makes them seem very tall. 10/ Bishop of Winchester / Southwark. The bishopric goes back to the year 634 CE, in case you were curious. Also, the bishop of Winchester gets to sit in the House of Lords and was typically the royal chancellor or treasurer. More on the Liberty of the Clink here. The bishop who got the license for permitting prostitution and brothels was the younger brother of King Stephen (the license, however, was granted by King Henry II, who was his first cousin once r

Synopsis Let’s talk about possible pagan origins for everyone’s favorite late-December excuse to eat a lot of pie. In addition, Em and Jesse discuss the surprisingly capitalist early traditions associated with St. Nicholas and the various strange beings who accompany Santa in different countries, from Pere Fouettard (who whips bad children in France) to the Krampus. Annotations and Corrections 1/ At the time we recorded this episode, it sounded as though the Big 10 were not going to have a season, but the Big 10 later announced an eight-game season (by the time this comes out, the Badgers will have played six with two cancellations because of the plague). The Wisconsin state legislature is still extremely useless. Gimme that Old Time Religion as performed by the inimitable Pete Seeger. Sadly, this wound up being the twenty-third episode posted. But it was the twenty-fifth one recorded. Jesse: Here’s an article in the Chicago Tribune and a picture of the Atheist/Agnostic “A” (with a sigh wishing everyone “Happy Winter Solstice”) in Daley Plaza. (I guess it went up in 2013 for the first time.) https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2013-12-04-chi-atheists-agnostics-have-their-own-display-at-daley-plaza-20131204-story.html Here’s a picture of the “A” lit up at night. https://wgnradio.com/wgn-radio/a-christmas-tree-a-menorah-and-a-giant-a/ The Christmas tree moved to Millenium Park in 2015, Leaving the Menorah, Nativity scene, and “A” in Daley Plaza. I have seen the Kinara there as well for Kawanza, but for some reason I can’t find pictures of it on the interwebs. 2/ The Feast of the Circumcision: in Jewish tradition, baby boys are circumcised eight days after birth in a ceremony called a bris (in Yiddish) or brit milah (Hebrew). So counting the 25th as day 1, Jesus’ bris was on Jan 1st. If you want to know just waaay too much about ritual circumcision, here is that wikipedia page, and if you want to live a happy life don’t ever get involved in a discussion of circumcision on the internet. 3/ Jesse mentions that St. Nicholas’s day is Dec 6th. This year, for the first time ever, I saw a sign in our supermarket saying, “Don’t forget St. Nicholas’s Day!” (I guess reminding people to buy gifts or something for their kids?) [Oh, wow! I’ve definitely heard the occasional reference from people I know who celebrate it, but I’ve never seen a USA business reference it.–Jesse] 4/ The comic about the Xmas tree, and here’s one about Mithras, too. (You can click on the panels to view them at a larger size.) Jesse: When I say the importance of the SUN to Christianity I do not mean the son/sun pun (which doesn’t work in Latin); I mean the metaphor of God as the Sun (frequently portrayed as beams of light in medieval paintings). 5/ [26:10] The cattle of the sun are from The Odyssey. Jesse: In The Odyssey the cattle of the sun belong to Helios (a Titan), but in the Homeric “Hymn to Hermes,” the baby Hermes steals the cattle of the sun (brilliantly) from Apollo (the Olympian sun god). This is why it’s so hard to be definitive about anything. Here’s the “Hymn to Hermes:” https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0138%3Ahymn%3D4 Apis bull: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_(deity) You can read the bull of heaven story here starting at p. 14. The main moral is, as a corollary to “When someone asks you if you’re a god, you say YES,” consider the rule, “If a goddess asks you out, try to let her down gently.” Basically, when Ishtar/Inanna proposes to Gilgamesh, he says, “Hey…haven’t you had a bunch of lovers that you got tired of and left?” and then he lists them off. Ishtar/Inanna is…not charmed by this behavior, as you might expect. 6/ We discussed the Christ child and the women who associated themselves with Mary and so on in episode 6 (Mysticism and Motherhood). 7/ Jesse: For more on the African wise man, see The Image of the Black in Western Art Vol 2: From the Early Christian Era to the “Age of Discovery” Pt 1: From the Demonic Threat to the Incarnation of Sainthood pp 21-25. African men first appear in imagery as attendants: an attendant of Herod, in a scene of the Magi before Herod painted near Rouen in the late 1100s, and as attendants of the Magi by the 1260s (for example, Nicola Pisano’s pulpit in Siena https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/italy-tuscany-region-siena-baptistry-nicola-pisano-pulpit-news-photo/122216191). By the second half of the 1300s, the image of an African magus/king seems to have appeared, and it’s well established by the 1400s. https://www.amazon.com/Image-Black-Western-Art-Incarnation/dp/0674052560 Em: [36:40] I feel like St. Francis trying to make this point about how you don’t really need a church (building), etc. is an interesting lesson in how some pe

Summary Em and Jesse discuss the life and plays of Hrotsvit, the strong voice of Gandersheim and the first named playwright in western Europe. Small content warning, we do discuss rape in this episode, but not explicitly. Annotations and Corrections 1/ For those too young to remember Benny Hill, this is what Em is talking about. 2/ Buster Keaton falls out a window about 25 seconds into this compilation. There’s also a very late in life Buster Keaton in the film version of A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to the Forum–it’s the last film he was in and he is still wonderful. [This montage is so great! Some things worth noticing: the ladder trick is an ACTUAL lazzo from early modern Italy (and let’s be fair, has probably existed since the invention of the ladder). The moment when Keaton misses the building and falls through the awnings–he was supposed to make it to the other building, but when he missed, he created a new lazzo. (Tom Cruise recently did a building-jumping stunt, missed the building, and crushed his ankle.) The house facade falling on Keaton (from Steamboat Bill, Jr., 1928) is absolutely real. It’s probably Keaton’s most famous–and most copied–stunt, but most people do it with a fake façade. Keaton used a real wall and a TINY window. –JN] For reference, his given name was Joseph Frank Keaton (later he changed his middle name to Francis). The version of his nickname origin story is a version that he told; others sources suggest he was a bit older (18 months vs 6 months) and the nickname was given by another actor named George Pardy. I’m pretty sure we have linked to Charlie Chaplin dancing with the globe previously, but go ahead and watch it again (actual dance starts around 1:45). And if you haven’t seen it, just go watch Modern Times. 3/ Minstrelsy was a 19th century phenomenon consisting of comic skits, musical acts, and the like, primarily depicting Black people as played by White actors. Here, you can hear the great Tom Lehrer riffing on what he calls the “Southern” song. (And before Jesse can mention it, it’s a little unfair to call the laws of the South “Medieval”–the Middle Ages were a long and complicated time and in many ways better to people of color than the South was. But it rhymed.) Jesse: Minstrelsy=Blackface=terrible history of US entertainment. Great commentaries on this fact appear in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles, while great commentaries on the continued use of Blackface can be seen here (from SNL). For a reminder that voice minstrelsy still exists, or if that’s behind a paywall, try this, and, of course, Hari Kondabolu’s The Problem with Apu. Em: We previously linked to RZA’s jingle in episode 15, but here it is again. 4/ Want to hear all of Carmina Burana? Click here. Composed by Carl Orff, text by a lot of people. 5/ Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: the first named playwright in Europe. 935–1002 CE. [I said 1001/2 in the podcast, but in fact her death could have been as early as 973, when she may have written her last work. However, it’s possible that she wrote another text later, which would have required her to live until 1002, if all sources are believed. Either way, I tend to lengthen her life rather than shorten it. Just because she wrote her last work c.973 (if, in fact, this was her last work), it does not mean she died immediately. Even if records are wrong, she may have written later works that are no longer extant (or that haven’t been attributed to her). Most people leave her death date open, which seems fair–we could just say she lived in the second half of the 10th century. See Katharina Wilson’s essay in the collection Medieval Women Writers, edited by Wilson, esp. p. 30 and note 5 p. 42–43. Peter Dronke points out that in 1007 Gandersheim was made a dependency of the diocese of Hildesheim, so the “feminist uptopia” discussed here lasted about the length of Hrotsvit’s time in at Gandersheim. At least she presumably didn’t live to see this happen. Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, p. 295 note 26–JN] Jesse: This Falstaff moment is in 1 Henry IV, Act IV scene ii. 6/ We have probably linked to this before, but if you want a beginner-friendly overview on the topic of “What exactly is the Vatican?,” here you go. 7/ Jesse: For a description (in Italian) of the “feminist utopia” described here, see: Ferruccio Bertini, Il teatro di Rosvita: con un saggio di traduzione e di interpretazione del Callimaco (Genova: Tilgher, 1979), p. 9. Peter Dronke, Women Writers… Amazon link. Autonomous peasant collective. As I’ve gotten older and know more people like Dennis, this has become funnier and funnier. 8/ Christine de Pizan (1364–c.1430): I actually don’t think we’ve mentioned her before. 9/ Terence: I still think we have

Summary If you’ve ever pondered how “time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana,” then this episode is for you. Join Jesse and Em as they discuss physical comedy and the origins of the commedia dell’arte, its French cousin the comedie francaise, and the Japanese comedic Kyogen style. With a lot of digressions about the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Key and Peele, Monty Python, and pretty much everyone else who has ever been funny on film. Annotations and Corrections 1/ Previous episodes in this series include: The Not-Evolution of Theatre (episode 15), Much Ado About Puppets (episode 16), and Dance Like Nobody’s Watching (episode 17). 2/ Jesse: Commedia dell’arte is incredibly complex, and there’s a LOT written about it. Here’s the Wikipedia article. If you want to delve deeper, I recommend The Routledge Companion to Commedia dell’Arte edited by Chaffee and Crick, which includes many essays by many scholars as well as a bibliography. Em: I apologize for my continual mispronunciation of “commedia.” I was raised in a barn (that wasn’t in Italy). The Comédie Française was founded in 1680 through the combining of two companies, one of which was Moliere’s former troupe (which was now run by his widow, Armande Béjart, and had already merged with another company shortly after Moliere’s death). The Comédie Française thus traces its origin directly back to Moliere and lays claim to being the oldest continuously active theatre company in Europe. (The Comédie Française actually lays claim to being the oldest continuously active theatre company in the world, but…that’s much harder to prove). The Servant of Two Masters (Il servitore di due padroni), by Carlo Goldoni. Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806) wrote a number of plays that deserve fame in their own right but are most famous for operatic adaptations (Turandot, adapted by Puccini, and The Love of Three Oranges, which was adapted by Prokofiev and premiered in Chicago, are probably the best known). Gozzi’s plays The Stage King, The Serpent Woman, and The Green Bird (adapted by Julie Taymore in 1996) also remain famous. Some of the zanni: Harlequin: initially referred to Arlecchino, a comic clown type of character. Most well-known as a servant character. Unrelated to harlequin romance novels, but definitely related to Harley Quinn. [Actually, Harlequin is the name of the publishing company that published the romance novels that eventually gave rise to the name “Harlequin Romance” (a bit like Kleenex=tissue, I guess). Their logo (their original logo, anyway) was a diamond with a jester/Arlecchino figure inside. The diamond itself mimics the diamond patches on Arlecchino’s costume. Today the logo seems to be the diamond with an “H” inside, but the diamond remains. Harlequin was purchased by NewsCorp in 2014 and is now a division of HarperCollins. To get a good look at Arlecchino’s costume with its patches, click here.–JN] Columbina: A smart, sassy female version of Harlequin. Jesse: Arlecchino and Columbina are both zanni, or clowns. Zanni were frequently servants (often of one of the vecchi or old man characters like Pantalone). Brighella and Pulcinella (who becomes Punch in England’s Punch and Judy puppet shows) are other examples of zanni. Zanni could be silly and inept or examples of the “smart servant” type. The Braggart Soldier, aka il Capitano: A soldier who uses the fact that none of the locals know him to brag about his conquests and rank in an effort to impress others. Some of the vecchi: Il Dottore, or the Doctor: an old man who serves as an obstacle for the young lovers. He typically dresses in black academic robes and fancies himself an intellectual, although he often speaks nonsense. [Yes, an important reminder that Il Dottore is a professor–a PhD, basically–not a medical doctor. The medical doctor was il Medico or Il Medico della peste, who wore the famous plague doctor’s mask. Not until the modern era did “doctor” automatically mean “medical doctor.”–JN] Pantalone, or Pantaloon: an old, wealthy (and greedy) man. Innamorati: The young lovers. Jesse: The “set list” was called a canovaccio. Some of the lazzi: (See also Mel Gordon’s essay “Lazzi” in the Routledge Companion above in note 2 and his book Lazzi: The Comic Routines of the Commedia dell’Arte.) The lazzo of falling: Harlequin falls from a high ladder or wall after being shot, shaken, or gravitationally abandoned. The lazzo of the statue: someone is pretending to be a statue, and makes fun of some passers-by when not regarded. Getting teeth pulled: c.f. The sadistic dentist in Little Shop of Horrors (Steve Martin!) Food lazzi: c.f. Charlie Chaplin’s version from Modern Times. Also, this category includes lazzi where a character has to at

Summary We got all your vampire subtypes: sparkling, British, and thirsty for the blood of the living. We got a couple of different types of ghosts, including hungry ghosts and dybbuks. And we got discussions of ghost stories that appear in both Noh drama and Chinese opera. All that, and we also talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s what you need today, so come and listen! Annotations and Corrections 1/ Vampires that sparkle = Twilight. Vampires with appealing British accents = Spike (James Marsters) from Buffy, although apparently a lot of films have British vampires, since the villains in American films tend to be British anyway…and vampires are supposed to be kind of sexy and kind of evil… (c.f. The Hunger, where David Bowie plays a vampire.) Jesse’s reference to a film called The Batman: Robert Pattinson (who played Edward in Twilight and who actually is British) is scheduled to play Batman in it. I have to admit, while listening to this I totally forgot that Pattinson was British and was trying to track down a Batman film starring James Marsters (who is American but famously played a British vampire, as discussed above). [James Marsters is definitely the best British vampire. And he only sparkled metaphorically, which…seems better. Vampires are soulless, and sparkling suggest divinity somehow. But maybe not in the Twilight franchise! I haven’t read them.–JN] 2/ Religions that have a Hell without a heaven: the Ancient Greeks [and Romans], although their Hell was kind of subdivided in different ways depending on who you are. [To be fair, it’s not “Hell;” it’s the afterlife. Everyone goes there, and some people end up in good places, some people in bad places, and some people end up in boring places.–JN] 3/ We got a question from an alert listener about how well The Seventh Seal reflects the actual Middle Ages. I don’t think Jesse gave too direct of an answer, other than “it’s a good film, you should watch it.” [The movie reflects the Middle Ages excellently in many ways, especially philosophically and artistically. See note 7 below!–JN] 4/ Materialism: The idea that there’s no soul, you’re just driven around by your brain. Note: this is different from dialectical materialism, which is a Marxist idea about how labor, class, and economic status interact to form social structures (meaning, here, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, I guess). 5/ The Clockwork Monk episode of Radiolab. Rather more famous automated owl. [Yes! All hail Harryhousen.–JN] The film Hugo features an automaton that was inspired by Henri Maillardet’s automaton. Article on Maillardet Automaton and the film. Wikipedia article on the Maillardet automaton (with pictures). The Antikythera mechanism. Unclear whether anyone put it in a bag of rice when they fished it out in 1901. 6/ The story of Hildr resurrecting the soldiers, also known as Hjaðningavíd, or the Saga of Hild. 7/ The terracotta soldiers were not just Qin dynasty, they were placed in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China and founder of the Qin dynasty (which went from 221 to 206 BCE). Note that “China” was not synonymous with the China we see on maps today. You can see the soldiers if you travel to Xi’an (which–I think it’s about 24+ hours by train from Beijing; it’s certainly at least a 12-hour drive, so it’s a bit of a schlepp), or there’s a touring exhibition that we both saw when it came to the Field Museum in Chicago. [SO AMAZING!!!!–JN] The use of mercury may have been a Taoist thing–I can’t find any evidence one way or another, but they did a lot of weird alchemical stuff. Or it may have been used as traps, or just because it looks like water. There are also, according to legends, crossbows aimed at people who might break in. Jesse: A memento mori is anything that reminds a living person of death (the phrase means “remembrance of death”). Usually this is portrayed as a skeleton (or skull) confronting a living person. Hamlet’s speech to Yorick’s skull is a great example. The point is never to forget that we all end up dead, so we’d better make our lives count (and not do evil, petty, stupid things). One of my favorites is the image that inspired Bergman’s Seventh Seal–a painting of Death playing chess with someone. It was painted by Albertus Pictor (c. 1440–c. 1507) in the Täby kyrka (Täby Church) in Sweden, and we actually see Pictor in the process of painting it in the Seventh Seal. 8/ In Buffy, the cross is what drives away vampires, regardless of the religion of both the person holding the cross and the vampire (or vampire’s former religion?). In at least one episode of Doctor Who, the person’s belief in another thing or person is what is protective, rather than the actual physical symbol (e.g., season 26&#82

Synopsis From Bisclavret to Remus Lupin, werewolves have been portrayed in fiction for centuries–and portrayed both positively and negatively, by Jews and Christians alike. Join Em and Jessie as they discuss Medieval legends about these amazing beasts. And also a little bit about golems, kappas, and zombies/revenants, plus other creepy facts. Annotations and Corrections 1/ Jesse, we have to save some monsters for next year’s episode. [There are always plenty of monsters! We haven’t even started.–JN] 2/ The children’s book Jesse is thinking of may be The Book of Hob Stories, by William Mayne. [Yes! It’s a whole series.–JN] Jesse: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare) II.i, the First Fairy to Puck: Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are not you he That frights the maidens of the villagery; Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern And bootless make the breathless housewife churn; And sometime make the drink to bear no barm; Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck: Are not you he? 3/ If we haven’t linked to it before, Daniel Radcliffe’s letter to the Trevor Project is here. 4/ The basilisk was discussed in episode 2 (see note 12). Jesse: The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare) I.ii, Polixenes to Camillo: Make me not sighted like the basilisk: I have look’d on thousands, who have sped the better By my regard, but kill’d none so. Camillo,– Also, while we’re on names, Harry Potter, and Shakespeare–Hermione is the very long-suffering wife of the jealous King Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (which precipitates the above dialogue between Polixenes and Camillo). In Greek mythology, Hermione was the daughter of Helen of Troy and Menelaus, King of Sparta (so, when Helen went off to Troy with Paris, she left her daughter Hermione behind). Wikipedia has pictures of Kappas if you’re curious. [In reading this Wikipedia page, I realized that kappa maki, a sushi roll containing rice and strips of cucumber, is named for the folkloric Kappa, which are said to like cucumber and are often given offerings of the same. I just need to pause a moment to gather in the fragments of my mind.–Em] 5/ Werewolves, not swearwolves. [10:30] “Be careful when you meet people in Harry Potter…” I feel like a solid grounding in classical languages would be pretty important in that world. Actually a little weird that Hogwarts didn’t have a Latin (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, …) teacher… Fenrir, child of Loki. For the Terry Pratchett book with the support group for shy banshees and reluctant zombies, see Reaper Man. One of the zombies (Reg Shoe) eventually becomes a recurring character in the various Night Watch books as well. [Yes, I think the support group is for the “differently alive.”–JN] The main Terry Pratchett books with golems are Feet of Clay, Going Postal, and Making Money, although like Reg Shoe they tend to turn up in the background of various others of the books. The Ted Chiang short story about golems is “Seventy-Two Letters,” and it can be found in his first collection, Exhalation. The X-Files episode with golems is “Kaddish” (season 4, episode 15). 6/ Yod-hay-vav-hay: it doesn’t spell out “Jehovah” in Hebrew because of grammar. (I think I had the Tetragrammaton mixed up in my head with some of the elements of the plot of “The Nine Billion Names of God,” by Arthur C. Clark. Honestly, I think that says something about how I have typically approached religion, somehow. –Em) 7/ For liminality, see episode 18, note 8. 8/ The Hereford World Map can be found in episode 11, note 21 and episode 14, note 21. 9/ Puck’s list, which immediately follows the First Fairy’s question above (II.i): I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon and make him smile When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly foal: And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab, And when she drinks, against her lips I bob And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale. The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough; And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh, And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there. —Midsummer Night’s Dream, act II, scene 1 We also see him drug a bunch of teenagers and turn the head of Bottom the weaver into that of an ass throughout the course of the play, among other things. [College-age kids by today’s standards. Also, while Oberon could certainly be accused of roofying Tita

Summary Halloween! A time of candy, Pagan ritual, sexy bus driver costumes, and syncretism. How much of this holiday has been handed down to us from the middle ages, and how much is modern? Join Em and Jesse for an exciting discussion of the medieval version of All Hallows’ Eve, with some fun digressions on the myths of Persephone/Ishtar in the underworld, JK Rowling, the movie Wicker Man, and why people are unlikely to put razor blades in Halloween candy. Annotations and Corrections 1/ Syncretism: when people with different beliefs run into each other, and for whatever reason they decide that they have actually been believing in the same religion even though they use different names for things–for example, Haitian Vodou involves many elements of syncretism between West African folk beliefs and Roman Catholic beliefs; for example, many of the lwa (the second level of deity, typically Yoruban gods) are syncretized with Catholic saints (Papa Legba, for example, is variously associated with St. Peter, St. Lazarus, and St. Anthony). Syncretism can happen because of cultural struggle (the Haitians were transported from West Africa to slavery in Haiti, where they were captives of French Catholics), or because two cultures live next to each other for a long time, or for other reasons. [Yeah, it’s a little more complicated than blending, borrowing, appropriating, and other words that get used for this sort of thing.–Jesse] 2/ There has been a weird revival of the Hades and Persephone story, probably because of this immensely popular web comic (hitherto unknown to me, but it’s entirely adorable) OR this other adorable web comic about them (what is even going on), but also there are a lot of memes like this that honestly I like because they retell the story in a way that gives Persephone a much more active hand in determining her fate than other versions. Although I find the interest in this particular story a little surprising–maybe because unlike Zeus or Poseidon, Hades seems to have been pretty loyal to her? Other versions of the myth, which we discuss somewhat in passing, involve Persephone being abducted by Hades and then tricked into eating pomegranate seeds. Homer doesn’t mention the abduction myth in the Iliad or the Odyssey and just describes her as a formidable queen of the Shades. Hesiod mentions the abduction briefly. Either way, it’s worth noting that “Persephone” might mean “bringer of destruction,” which is kind of appropriate for a nature goddess, right? I mean, nature is not a benign force. Nature is flowers in a meadow, but nature is also bears and sharks and moose and hippopotamuses and tornadoes. Jesse: It’s true that Homer doesn’t mention the abduction myth in the Iliad or the Odyssey; in fact, his description of Persephone focuses on the fact that she is to be feared. Hesiod also implies that she is as terrifying as her husband Hades (Theogony lines 768 and 775), although he also briefly mentions that Persephone is carried off from her mother by Hades (Theogony lines 914–15). Hesiod’s Theogony at Perseus Project It’s clear from Hesiod that Persephone’s dread aspect (Hesiod’s ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης) and her abduction by Hades are not mutually exclusive elements of the myth. The abduction is clearly a stable and long-standing part of the story–as is the fact that Zeus enables it by essentially giving Persephone to his brother Hades without her mother Demeter’s knowledge or permission–and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (not actually written by Homer) gives an incredibly detailed and fairly graphic account of the abduction. In this version, Persephone eats the pomegranate and has to spend 1/3 (later 1/2) of the year with Hades but gets to spend 2/3 of the year with her mother Demeter. You can read the Homeric Hymn to Demeter at Perseus Project. On the subject of Persephone’s name (Περσεφονη)–it probably does not mean bringer of destruction. This is a false etymology–at some point, someone decided to deconstruct Persephone’s name accordingly, but her name did not actually derive from these terms. The false etymology relies on πέρθω (pertho; future tense πέρσω persō), which means “to destroy” and φονή (phonē), which means “carnage” or “a bloody murder.” Again, it’s a great false etymology, but her name didn’t actually derive from those words; someone created the derivation based on the name which was already in existence. In addition, Persephone is frequently referred to (and represented in statues as) a kore, or a young girl. While this may seem at odds with her “dreadful” nature, she strikes fear into people based on her position as Queen of the Underworld (she’s good at her job), not based on the fact that she is depicted as personally or physically terrifying (like Athena is, for example).

Synopsis Dance dramas are theatrical presentations that use dance (and sometimes words, but mostly dance) to tell a story. Em and Jesse look at dance dramas from around the world, from Mesoamerica before and after the Spanish invasion to Japan. With a number of digressions involving Prince, Irish step dancing, Alvin Ailey, and the movie Being John Malkovich. Annotations and Corrections 1/ A shout out to Manual Cinema in Chicago. Here’s the Candyman trailer. We talked about Kara Walker in episode 10 (see notes 16 and 24). 2/ The theatre in the Water Tower is Lookingglass Theatre. Mr and Mrs Pennyworth (trailer here) was a Lookingglass Theatre production with Manual Cinema. If you’re in Chicago, we recommend them both. The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival is here. They’re doing workshops at the end of October/through November 2020 online, and more will undoubtedly pop up. Check them out. Also, check out the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta–great programming for kids. 3/ Dance drama! We talked about this a little bit at the end of episode 12 (note 30), in the context of Aztec and Mayan dance dramas. Misty Copeland is the first African American woman to become a principal dancer for American Ballet Theatre, which is one of the biggest ballet companies in the US (if you are like me/Em and don’t understand what a principal dancer is–it’s like having a fifth degree black belt in dance, I guess). For his own purple reasons, Prince hired her to dance on top of his piano (and throughout his stage show) back when he was still alive and touring. [Heart.–Jesse] Race in ballet is a complicated topic, but it is worth noting that until relatively recently, it was common for non-White ballerinas to powder their skin while performing to appear paler, while some roles were danced by White dancers wearing blackface. In addition, there are traditional standards for what ballerinas look like that privilege the look of white bodies. Finally, ballet is expensive to train in if you’re not being paid–think $200 per month for pointe shoes. The Richmond, VA woman who took up Irish dance is Morgan Bullock and video of her can be found here. Ballerinas changing the Lee statue in Richmond (and much more!): Brown Ballerinas for Change. Alvin Ailey founded his own dance troupe and choreographed a landmark piece called “Revelations.” More about “Revelations” here. An excerpt from Dada Masilo’s Swan Lake. NYT write-up. 2/ Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz (1648–1695). Wrote the Loa for the (Auto Sacramental of the) Divine Narcissus. See episode 12, note 30 and following. Of women elsewhere in Europe doing amazing things during this time, look no farther than Sophia of the Palatinate (1630–1714), who became electress of Hanover and was mother of (the British) King George I. Had seven children who lived to adulthood and had Gottfried Leibniz as her librarian and personal friend before dying age 83. Her descendants now occupy all seven European thrones and Luxembourg. Anne (1665–1714) was also queen of England during this period (beginning 1702). 3/ Nahuatl is an interesting language. Here are some words in it you already know or might recognize: chipotle, coyotl, axolotl, chocolotl. [English likes to import food words. Lots of other words too, English is a very spongy language, but definitely food words.–Jesse] The Chester play was discussed in episode 8 (see note 26). The Spanish-style morality play discussed here is a last judgment play (titled Final Judgment) in Nahuatl. An English translation can be found in Stages of Conflict edited by Taylor and Townsend. Sor Juana de la Cruz’s Loa and the Mayan Rabinal Achi can also be found in translation in this excellent collection. A slightly fuller explanation of the sexism of the Final Judgment: The priest stops our heroine, Lucia, from confessing(!!!) and accuses her of not accepting the seventh sacrament, holy matrimony. Presumably the point isn’t just that she’d been sleeping around but that she may have been married in an Aztec ceremony, which of course wouldn’t count. I refrained from mentioning in the podcast that Christ himself appears (it’s the Last Judgment, remember) and berates Lucia, helping to thrust her into Hell(!!!!). Again, the play is horrifically sexist and excruciatingly colonialist, but it’s a fascinating study. “You have to be allowed to confess everything, that’s the point.” See also Michel Foucault’s History of Human Sexuality, vol. 1 on the link/transfer between confession to priests and confession to analysts in modern society. [Oooooo, yes!–Jesse] [24:21] “They have a God…” They actually have a couple of gods–Quetzalcoatl, and the one I am struggling to name, Coatlicue (“Snake Skirt”). (“Coatl” means snake in Nahuatl; -tl or -tli are absolutive singular suffixes

Summary Puppets are actually a pretty medieval art form–and not just for kids. These puppets do and say things that would have been politically risky for the humans controlling them to say, and also they are real works of art. Join us as we look puppetry traditions of Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Turkey, and Egypt. With some digressions about the fun of buying random pastries at Chinese bakeries, and also Shakespeare. Annotations, Notes, Corrections 1/ Em: I have made vegan mooncakes (mooncakes, or 月餅 / yue bing, are the pastry with egg yolks inside–typically salted duck eggs, I think–there might be other pastries like this too). My Taiwanese friends were, hmm, gracious. Also, I have made my own red bean paste, and it is basically all sugar (well, a lot of recipes have a 1:1 ratio of adzuki beans to sugar; some note that if you’re using the bean paste in pastry, as opposed to serving it on its own, you should use more). Also, the mushrooms I got hung up on: cat ear mushroom/nam meo is actually, I think, the Vietnamese name for it. The Chinese name is black wood ear/黑木耳, so the word “mushroom” was actually not on the menu, hence my confusion. BUT also it turns out that in the Middle Ages (at least, according to Wikipedia), they were called Jew’s Ear mushrooms! And in fact the Latin name is Auricuularia auricula-judae. Why? The mushrooms themselves are vaguely ear-shaped, and tradition holds that Judas Iscariot hanged himself on an elder tree, which is where the mushrooms grow (in some places). Jesse: Food is amazing!!! We should have a food episode!! 2/ Cesar: Gaul is full of barbarians. France, 1500 years later: We are the resurgence of classical civilization, of which Greece and Rome were the primary lights. Cesar: My, how the turntables have… turned. 3/ Concerning Titus Andronicus: the villain, Aaron the Moor, has the best evil monologue in all of Shakespeare. You can read it here. That is the only thing I really have to say about that play, which in other respects is…really bloody. Jesse: 3 Henry VI, I.iv–Queen Margaret has (Richard Duke of) York stand on a molehill (which parallels the hill at Calvary) and crowns him with a paper crown (which parallels Jesus’s crown of thorns). Margaret also gives York a handkerchief to dry his tears, and the handkerchief is stained in the blood of his son (Edmund Earl of) Rutland. In this moment, Rutland is symbolic of the Christ child, while his blood on the handkerchief is reminiscent of the collecting of Christ’s blood in the chalice (aka the holy grail) at the crucifixion. We get some good father/son symbolism as well, before York is stabbed to death by Margaret and Clifford. Shakespeare is clearly using the symbolism from Passion plays to great advantage. Margaret also gets some truly extraordinary lines (it IS Shakespeare): “Brave warriors, Clifford and Northumberland,/ Come, make him stand upon this molehill here,/ That raught at mountains with outstretched arms,/ Yet parted but the shadow with his hand.” (I love this line so much.) Also of interest, the 1592 pamphlet written by playwright Robert Green (probably, and published by Henry Chettle), titled Greenes, Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance, includes the famous lines “there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie.” The quote refers to a jack-of-all-trades (Johannes Factotum) who thinks a lot of himself as a an actor (player) even though his ability is really due to the playwrights who write his lines (beautified with our–playwrights’–feathers), and now he thinks he can do anything (Johannes Factotum) including write his own plays as well as the “real” playwrights (bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you)!!! The line “Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide” comes from this scene in 3 Henry VI, where York memorably calls Margaret “O tiger’s heart wrapt in a woman’s hide!” The pun on “Shake-scene” and “Shake-spear” is presumably to identify Shakespeare to any reader who didn’t see or hear about the line in 3 Henry VI (and, of course, to make fun of him again). Anyhow, this pamphlet is the earliest extant external reference to Shakespeare that we’ve got, and it’s one of the ways we know he started out as an actor before he started writing plays. It’s also how we know he’d already written the Henry VI plays by/in 1592. Interestingly, Greene died before the pamphlet was published, and his publisher later seems to have apologized to Shakespeare “The other, whom at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had, for that, as I

Summary In which Em and Jess discuss the important theoretical contributions of Tropic Thunder and Blazing Saddles to performance studies, thereby illustrating the important differences between performance, theatre, and ritual and vital questions about their respective origins. Also, Jess calls Socrates evil, and then Em and Jess decolonize medieval theatre beginning with India and China. (Aristotle loves theatre and therefore was not evil.) Notes, Annotations, and Corrections 1/ Okay, to be honest–we didn’t talk about Australia, and that is a super colonized place that is ripe for a reevaluation–evidently, the period we refer to as “the middle ages” is typically called “prehistory” in Australia because there were no written records. (Refer to previous rant about the privileging of written records over other forms of memory.) Sometime we will have to circle back and think about this. [I read “super colonized” as “spider colonized” at first, which also rings true for Australia. But yes–we will definitely have to cover Australia and New Zealand!–JN] 2/ The dudes are emerging. [So many layers!!!–JN] The new ice cream truck jingle by RZA. Turkey in the Straw information. White Christmas “Minstrel Number”. A NY Times article on the Met production of Othello. [Seriously, WTF!!! Come on, Met!–JN]] I think the Ben Stiller/Spielberg movie was Empire of the Sun. [Yes, it was!–JN] The Sean Penn movie was I Am Sam. I [Em] hadn’t heard of it, and–wow. Reading the summary, all I can say is it deserves whatever fun Ben Stiller was able to poke at it. Also, as a face-blind person, the fact that so many actors become famous because they look like other actors is the bane of my freaking existence. And here is the trailer for Satan’s Alley. 3/ [17:35] On performing parenthood: welcome to Em’s theory of how gender inequalities get perpetuated from generation to generation despite the idea that women shouldn’t have to do 100% of childcare and homemaking being a thing since at least 1989. (Actually probably a lot of women had this idea earlier, but 1989 is when The Second Shift was published.) This doesn’t have too much to do with medieval studies, but whatever, sez I. [This was definitely an issue in the Middle Ages! We should have a medieval kid/parenthood episode.–JN] [I would totally be in for that.–Em] 4/ For Ishtar/Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld, see Episode 8 nt. 18. Oedipus Rex, by Tom Lehrer. 5/ [29:59] “Socrates is evil…we’ll footnote that.” Stub footnote so Jesse can provide some proof or something. Otherwise we are going to get nailed on this by the ancient philosophy crowd. [I stand by this!! I have long rants on this, but I can boil it down to a few points. 1) Socrates’s students–specifically Critias–were responsible for a coup that overthrew the democracy in 404 BCE and installed the Thirty Tyrants, who were sympathetic to Sparta (to whom Athens had just lost the Peloponnesian War). 2) The Tyrants, especially Critias, were only in power for 8 months but managed to kill a LOT of people (maybe 5% of the Athenian population). Scholars have excused this over the years as “necessary” blah blah BS. IT’S FASCIST; THEY WERE FASCISTS. (Or more properly proto-fascist, I guess.) 3) Socrates hated democracy and loved the idea of an oligarchy composed of elite individuals. (Read Plato’s Republic.) Welp, turns out oligarchs are f**king monsters. 4) Critias again. 5) The democracy was restored in 403 BCE, and it was agreed that because SO MANY PEOPLE HAD BEEN KILLED by the tyrants, the newly restored democracy would only kill the tyrants themselves and their closest allies. Everyone else would be given amnesty. SOCRATES continued to preach oligarchy. 6) Seriously, read Plato’s early work. It’s not actually Socrates, of course, but it’s certainly influenced by Socrates. He was a classist, elitist snob. 7) Socrates was told to stop preaching oligarchy (i.e., the idea that the best government was one run by a few “qualified” individuals), but he wouldn’t stop. He was told to leave town; he wouldn’t. He couldn’t be executed directly for his role in the 404 BCE coup because of the general amnesty. (His role was difficult to prove anyway, despite Critias. The tyrants ordered Socrates to help in an execution, but Socrates said later that he just went home). So, “corrupting the youth” was a euphemism for “convincing people to overthrow the democracy.” 8) We celebrate Socrates as a martyr to education and freedom of speech, which is the most BS thing ever. He was a genius philosopher, and he’s had an astonishing impact on Western Civilization (via Plato). BUT he was pretty evil too. He is, of course, not the only philosopher to have

Summary “One night in Bangkok makes a hard man tremble.” Weird concept musicals by Abba members aside, Asia is a place that many in the West have a fairly Orientalist relationship with, seeing it as both exotic and primitive. In today’s episode, we explore that relationship; starting with the French “restoration” of Angkor Wat, we move on to the naming of countries and map making. Includes some digressions on CSI, lese-mageste laws, the play Cambodian Rock Band, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. If you’re not a regular reader of the notes, be sure to at least check out note 20 (around 1:10:40) for transcription of a bit that had to be cut because of recording issues. Notes, Annotations, and Corrections 1/ Jesse: If anyone is wondering, the CSI:Miami episode is “Man Down,” season 5, episode 15 (aired in February 2007). Em: Sir Archibald Mapsalot III. 2/ Emily: “So, Asia… uh… It’s really big.” About Mongolia: There’s a lot of China that is farther west than Mongolia, but you could also say the same thing for a lot of South/Southeast Asia–China is very big. Technically, the US Department of State classes it as East Asia, but I don’t believe the UW-Madison Department of East Asian Languages and Literature had anything to do with it (go figure). Arguably it has more in common with a lot of Central Asia owing to having been ruled by various Steppe nomad tribes–although come to that, China was as well, and– Anyway, enjoy this song by the premiere heavy metal band of Mongolia, the HU. [Great song!–Jesse] 3/ Anthony Reid’s Wikipedia page has a list of his publications. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce vols. I and II are the ones that I read. 4/ The lese-majeste laws in Thailand basically limit what can be said about the royal family (as well as royal development projects, the royal institution, the entire Chakri dynasty, and any previous Thai king). Every couple of years, there’s a big case of some foreigner being brought up on charges for drunkenly punching a portrait of the king or stepping on a bank note or something. Unclear how this will change under the new king (Rama X), who is not as beloved as his father was. There have been a bunch of higher profile cases recently (a lot more protests recently). The King Never Smiles, by Paul M. Handley, was an unauthorized biography of Rama IX (Bhumibol) and did not paint him in a good light (I believe it cast some doubt on the official story of how he came to be king as well–although other biographers, including the authorized biographer William Stevenson, have also proposed weird theories and gotten their books banned as a result). If all of this sounds very mysterious, go read Ananda Mahidol’s (Rama VIII) Wikipedia page. 5/ The mysterious book about Thai prisons may have been The Damage Done by Warren Fellows, but “Thai Prison Memoirs” is an entire genre–here’s a list of several. Note that they are disturbing. QI clip about prison. [Most of QI is hilarious. This clip is not!–Jesse] 6/ Siem Reap, Cambodia. Lovely place. Be careful not to wander through random fields and be careful going out late at night–one of the unfortunate legacies of the various wars Southeast Asia has faced (both the Viet Nam War and the Khmer Rouge takeover) is that there are unexploded mines and other ordinance in many places–I believe Cambodia has the highest ratio of amputees per capita in the world because of this. Em’s entire shpiel about Angkor is largely drawn from Penny Edwards, Cambodge, University of Hawai’i Press, 2008. Amazon link. French Indochina was Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Three major types of Buddhism: Mahayana Buddhism (e.g., Zen): Anyone can become enlightened through meditation. Theravada Buddhism: We will support the monks so they can become enlightened. The good karma this generates will allow us to be reborn and become monks to become enlightened. Vajrayana Buddhism (e.g., Tibetan, like the Dalai Lama): Kind of Mahayana, kind of its own thing. It’s–weird. (Like, intentionally weird stuff–a lot of esoteric rituals.) In general, you get Mahayana Buddhism in China, the Koreas, and Japan; Theravada Buddhism in mainland SE Asia + Sri Lanka; and Vajrayana Buddhsim in Tibet and its mountainous border regions (Northern India, Nepal, Bhutan), and also in Mongolia, Tuva, and parts of Western China (the Steppes, including, oddly enough, Kalmykia–a Russian federal subject with the population of Madison that is the only place in Europe where Buddhism is the most-practiced religion). 7/ Columbusing: Discovering Things for White People. [Reverse Columbusing is usually just assimilation. –Jesse] Old joke: What did Watson and Crick discover? Answer: Rosalind Franklin’s research notes. [Love this, glad we could use it here!–Jesse] 8/ “There were Khmer people l

Summary In the words of the great philosopher Toto, “I bless the RAINS down in AFRICA.” [This song plays every year at the Saturday night dance at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, otherwise known as Kalamazoo. Very medieval. –Jesse] We explore Africa from a decolonizing viewpoint, including words of wisdom from deceased UW–Madison professor Dr. Harold Scheub, an interesting conversation about the Crusader or Shah ‘Abbas Bible, and the traditions of Ethiopian Christianity, and a few digressions about Mt. Rushmore, trans people and film, the movies Coming to America and The Last Samurai, and some discussion of the spread of religions and Jewish genetics. Notes, Annotations, and Corrections 1/ The creation of global trade routes and a global system of economics is a major theme of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, which covers approximately 1649–1715. 2/ The Chinese did “discover” America in 1421. Allegedly. According to a book by a British man who had no particular training in history and, in fact, not even a bachelor’s degree; also the book was allegedly worked on by over 130 ghost writers and no one fact-checked it. SO, uh. Probably not. Incidentally, the explorer given the honor of discovering the US was Zheng He, who I think we mentioned in another episode–he was a Muslim eunuch, explorer, and diplomat who became an important figure at the court of the Yongle Emperor. 3/ Various pipeline projects have been cancelled. Sort of. [Yeah, the US Court of Appeals already set aside the verdict of the lower court and said the Dakota Access Pipeline can keep running while the court battle rages on. –Jesse] 4/ The guy who carved (part of) Mt Rushmore (he died) and (a non-surviving part of) the monument to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy (he was kicked off the project and his work blasted off the mountain; this is the monument we mention carved on Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, GA) was Gutzon Borglum. (The LCotC bas relief DOES feature Traveler, in case you have been keeping track, along with the horses of Jefferson Davis (Blackjack) and Stonewall Jackson (Little Sorrel). Neither of the other two horses is cool enough to have their own Wikipedia page though.) Borglum was an odd duck–he was a child of Mormon polygamist immigrants, Freemason, and if not an actual Klan member then someone who was deeply involved in Klan politics. He also carved a bust of Abraham Lincoln from a six-ton block of marble, won a prize for carving Union General Philip Sheridan (one version stands in Washington DC, one in Chicago), and did another statue of progressive IL governor John Peter Altgeld. His son, who took over Mt Rushmore after his death, was named Lincoln. 5/ Netflix documentary: Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen. Apparently 80% of Americans don’t know any trans people. That’s so crazy. Apparently I know a lot more trans people than average. [I’m not giving links to D.W. Grifith, but definitely look him up if you want to. More importantly, look up Susan Stryker. She has great books; check them out at your favorite local library or bookstore.–Jesse] 6/ The Nazi anatomy text was Topographische Anatomie des Menschen by Eduard Pernkopf. The remark about how white supremacy is the playing field we all stand on was something Fran Lebowitz (a writer who exists primarily to occasionally be interviewed by the New Yorker, as far as I can tell) said (in an interview with Vanity Fair). It was something she said in 1997. Actual quote: The way to approach it, I think, is not to ask, “What would it be like to be black?” but to seriously consider what it is like to be white. That’s something white people almost never think about. And what it is like to be white is not to say, “We have to level the playing field,” but to acknowledge that not only do white people own the playing field but they have so designated this plot of land as a playing field to begin with. White people are the playing field. The advantage of being white is so extreme, so overwhelming, so immense, that to use the word “advantage” at all is misleading since it implies a kind of parity that simply does not exist. Judith of Bethulia. I don’t know where the idea I had that Jefferson had many children with enslaved Black women came from–we know that he had six with Sally Hemings (who was actually his deceased wife’s half sister. Four of the children survived to adulthood and were freed; the youngest, Eston Hemings, brought his family here to Madison, WI, where he changed his last name to Jefferson and lived as part of the White community and is buried here). Anyway, you can read The Memoirs of Madison Hemings here, and see the reflections of some of his living descendents here. The Madison Hemings piece suggests that he didn’t have children with other Black women that MH was aware of. [As far as I know, Sally He

Summary Welcome to part two of our series on decolonization. This week, Em and Jesse discuss what the Middle Ages looked like in the Americas before the arrival of colonizers. We take brief looks at the Mayan, Aztec, Mississipian, and Moche civilizations and a few of their many achievements. With some fun digressions about the Confederate battle flag, Em’s panic-inducing trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, and the noises that eagles make. Notes, Annotations, and Corrections 1/ Daily Show from 2001 reminds us that Colbert is a master. [OK, this was 19 years ago! My sense of time during my own life is bad.–Jesse] Daily Show 2015 Daily Show in 2017 on Confederate Memorial Day On Bree Newsome’s removal of South Carolina’s Confederate flag. Jesse: Trevor Noah is amazing, but I miss Jon Stewart soooooooooooo much. Why can’t we have both? (I guess we’ve proven we don’t deserve such bounty.) Many, many sobbing emojis. 2/ Berlin Wall: 1961–1989 (or 1991, depending on how you’re counting). 3/ Madison had statues of Forward (a lady who is kind of our symbol?) and Hans Cristian Heg pulled down. HCH is an interesting case because he was a Norwegian immigrant and an abolitionist, anti-slavery activist (who led Wisconsin’s anti-slave-catcher militia), politician, and prison reformer who died of wounds received at the Battle of Chikamauga. However, just because he was pretty great for his time doesn’t necessarily mean that he would be great by our standards today–I’ve seen some allegations that he wasn’t exactly pro-Black (which aren’t really substantiated in any news article, so I don’t know); he was also a “49er,” meaning he went West to participate in the Gold Rush–incidentally, Wisconsin’s motto, “Forward,” is partially about Westward expansion, which is, you know, a lot about the Federal Government massacring (or permitting the massacre of) various indigenous peoples in order to permit (White) settlers to move in. (Also it feels weird to think about Wisconsin as “West.” Hmm.) So–I get it. I don’t totally believe that the people who pulled down the statues were aware of these things when they were doing the destruction–I think they were just angry. Buuuuuut you know, whatever, seems justified. Also they (i.e., the same group that pulled down the statues) beat up a state congressperson, but no one was upset about that for some reason. (He is a Democrat, and Republicans control the House and Senate here, so that’s probably why we didn’t hear too much.) He has since co-sponsored legislation with Republicans that would make it a crime to pull down statues. I feel like he might be taking the wrong lesson from this. I wanted to add a note on the guy who got arrested (Yeshua Musa, who was a local BLM activist), because while I think I gave the story as I understood it at the time, it’s worthy of thinking more about–he has been indicted on federal extortion charges and faces up to 40 years in federal prison. Also, he wasn’t demanding money from local businesses (as I suggest in the podcast discussion), he was demanding a meal. Whatever else I have to say about his behavior, I do pretty much feel like the Justice Department has made the decision to charge the heck out of him in order to use him as an example. I guess I don’t know too much about the situation (my suspicion is that a lot of stuff isn’t really getting covered by the papers), but I’ve noticed that political activist groups, like BLM (and other similar local ones), are not nostalgic or petty, and when they get angry about someone getting arrested there’s probably a real (and strategic) reason behind it. The anger about Mr. Musa’s arrest has persisted, and a few other local activists have also been arrested, which is very suspicious in my opinion. Jesse: I think that this is an excellent example of why we should spend more money on social services and less on police. Many Americans have been taught to believe that police protect us from crime, and that can absolutely be true, but that is not the main function of the police. As the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) points out, the verb “to police” comes from “Middle French, French policer to administer, govern, control (1461 in Middle French).” **Control** is the operative word in this definition. The noun “police” is best understood today as the OED’s definition 5a: “The civil force of a state responsible for maintaining public order and enforcing the law, including preventing and detecting crime.” We frequently assume that the most important words here are “preventing and detecting crime,” but one of the most important functions of the police has always been “maintaining public order and enforcing the law.” “Maintaining and enforci

Summary “Pulling down statues isn’t erasing history….erasing history is the fact that you live on land stolen from a people you can’t name.” Em and Jesse dive into the theory and practice of decolonization–what does it mean, what are post-colonial studies, and how can we put this knowledge into practice, reforming our views of our modern American lives as well as the Middle Ages? This episode has a lot of the decolonization theory, and coming episodes will have a lot more of the practice part, but this episode does have some fun discussions of pulling down statues, weird characters in Thomas Pynchon novels, non-English versions of Shakespearean plays, and various forms of Orientalism in fine art, like the odalisque and the picturesque. Notes, Annotations, and Corrections 1/ Harriet Tubman projected on the side of the Lee statue. Sometimes it blows my mind that she lived recently enough that we have a photograph of her. She died in 1913! [Agreed–super amazing and impressive! Also, the only Confederate statue left on Monument Avenue in Richmond, VA as of 7/10/20 is Lee. Richmond has taken down Jackson, Stuart, and Maury (Davis was already gone). Arthur Ashe will hopefully be the lone statue on the formerly problematic street very soon. The statue I discuss in Libby Hill Park (the Confederate Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, which was on top of a really tall column on top of a hill overlooking the James River) has been taken down as well. History marches forward, and the former capital of the Confederacy attempts to help form a more perfect union.–Jesse] 2/ Malcolm Gladwell has a really good bit about plaques placed on offensive monuments to “contextualize” them in this episode of Revisionist History. (I don’t think I really need to tell you that RH is a really good podcast overall and I recommend it–Malcolm Gladwell has definitely sold 1000% more books than I have and has a huge following. Nevertheless, it’s a great podcast.–Em) 3/ So I looked this up for episode 10 but I don’t think I mentioned it in the notes–the family apparently originally built the statue basically in the middle of a corn field, and then later the city caught up with it (I believe they gave it to the city and then the city developed in that direction). 4/ As of my writing these notes (7/6/2020), the Lee monument is still up, but the judge who issued a stay of removal has recused himself from the case. Another lawsuit alleging that removing the statue would hurt home values in the area has already garnered FOUR judicial recusals… However, looking at the area on Zillow, none of the recently sold houses appear to use adjacency to the REL monument as a selling point, so I am unconvinced that the property devaluation argument will hold any water (one rental does appear to mention the house being situated at “the Lee circle on Monument Ave.,” but that seems more like trying to give a cross-street than anything else; they could certainly just say “the Dolly Parton circle” if the monument were replaced). [Yes, I believe that “back in the day” (i.e., until a few years ago), the Lee statue was used as a selling point. That no longer happens, but I’m sure some people who still live in the area bought their houses in those days (or their family did), and they might not realize that the statue is now degrading their house’s value rather than enhancing it. That section of Monument Ave is a wealthy and formerly all-white section of town, so…you see where I’m going with this. However, lots of householders have come out in favor of removal, and they’ve been fairly vocal–presumably to distance themselves from the people who are stuck in the past.–Jesse] 5/ Officially, I believe it is a 14′ statue atop a 60′ plinth. Actually would not recommend trying to topple it as a protestor–seems unsafe. 6/ How to Topple an Obelisk. 7/ The full quote from Lee in context (from Lee’s letter to the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association, Lexington, Va., August 5, 1869; emphasis mine): Dear Sir:—Absence from Lexington has prevented my receiving until to-day your letter of the 26th ult., enclosing an invitation from the Gettysburg Battle-field Memorial Association to attend a meeting of the officers engaged in that battle at Gettysburg, for the purpose of marking on the ground by enduring memorials of granite the position and movements of the armies on the field. My engagements will not permit me to be present. I believe, if there, I could not add anything material to the information existing on the subject. I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered. Very respectfully, your obedient servan

Summary In which we discuss iconography (the study of icons), primarily so we can talk about the protests relating to/attempting to tear down the Robert E. Lee (and other major Confederate) statue(s) in Richmond, VA. But there’s also some good stuff on Medieval iconography, Kehinde Wiley, GB Trudeau, and Beyoncé. Notes, Corrections, Annotations 1/ For reference, Charlottesville has a population of about 48k people, while Richmond has a population of 227k (similar in size to Madison, actually). Jesse: True! However, the greater RIchmond metropolitan area actually had 1,263,617 people (in 2016) while the greater Madison metropolitan area had 654,230 (in 2017). The Richmond area is actually pretty big for a city that feels fairly small. Also, UVA’s student population is 21,985, so the university is a very significant presence. Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia (UVA) in 1819, and the school is occasionally called “Mr. Jefferson’s University.” 2/ Maggie Walker. The daughter of a former slave (and Union spy!), she was the first Black woman to charter a bank in the US. She was an advocate for African Americans and women; later, when she became confined to a wheelchair due to medical problems, she became an advocate for the disabled as well. The statue of her was unveiled in July of 2017, just about a month before the Charlottesville protests (which were around August 13, 2017). Here is the statue. 3/ Would the modern US’s relationship with African Americans be significantly different (better) if Lincoln had lived? There’s no easy answer to the question, because Northerners were anti-slavery but also generally anti-Black. Still, Lincoln was a master politician. Also this seems like a great starting point for a steampunk novel for anyone who is way more into historical research than I am. (And, like, I’m half of a podcast about history, so–be really into it.)–Em. Jesse: Lots of scholars argue about this. The question is, would Reconstruction have continued longer than it did? For example, Mississippi elected two African Americans to the US Senate during Reconstruction–Hiram Rhodes Revels in 1870 and Blanche Bruce in 1875. Imagine if that had continued! Unfortunately, the compromise of 1877 (which made Rutherford B. Hayes president) effectively ended Reconstruction and ushered in the era of Jim Crow. If Lincoln had been president at the beginning of Reconstruction rather than Johnson, would it have made a difference? Would Reconstruction have been harder to end? Would it have become more integral to US politics? Hard to know, but worth considering. Lincoln’s assassination was a terrible tragedy, but we frequently think to ourselves “at least the war was over.” Unfortunately, in many ways the fight for Civil Rights was just hitting its stride, so Lincoln’s assassination may have made a very real, very important difference by removing him from the presidency and installing Andrew Johnson (a Democrat and former slaveholder from Tennessee who did not value the rights of African Americans but did value the rights of (white) Southerners). 4/ The statue was unveiled on May 29, 1890. Interestingly, Lee had a famous horse named Traveller (so famous he merits his own Wikipedia page), who is not depicted in the piece–I assume that at 16 hands, he was felt to be too petite for the size of the sculpture. As someone else who is 16 hands tall, I find this discrimination distressing. Also it seems to speak to a certain changing view of masculinity. Jesse: Ok, I always just assumed the horse was Traveller (who was undoubtedly a lovely, awesome horse and does not deserve to be condemned alongside Lee!). However, the Wikipedia page for the monument does indeed state that the horse is not Traveller because Traveller did not have the ideal dimensions (from the sculptor’s point of view). This raises a lot of interesting questions about iconography and masculinity that we could have addressed if we’d known! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee_Monument_(Richmond,_Virginia) 5/ [6:25] “The governor has said that the Lee statue should just come down as soon as possible.” Since we recorded this episode, a man from the family that originally donated the land and statue to the city (it was officially annexed in 1892) has sued the city of Richmond and an injunction on the removal was put into place. Jesse: Jefferson Davis was toppled. The law that went into effect on July 1 was intended to create a process for taking down the statues, but the mayor declared that public safety was at risk (because of people toppling statues). The city of Richmond removed Stonewall Jackson on July 1 and Matthew Fontaine Maury (Confederate Navy) on July 2. The city of Richmond will presumably remove JEB Stuart and Robert E. Lee over the July 4 weekend. 6/ Kehinde Wiley: You know him from this brilliant portrait of Obama: Pr

Summary If heretics go directly to hell, and saints go directly to heaven, what happens if you burn as a heretic someone who later turns out to be a saint? Em and Jesse talk about Dante, sainthood and the inquisitio process, and finally look at the cases of two female saints, one of whom was initially burned as a heretic, and one of whom was treated, ultimately, as a saint rather than a demoniac. Annotations, Corrections, and Notes 1/ In fact, George Floyd was murdered on May 25th, so even though on the 31st it felt like the protests had been going on for weeks already, it was only one week, as noted, when we recorded this episode. Viva la revolution! 2/ Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman, Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999 (link). [Quote from page 1.–Jesse] 3/ Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens. The miniseries (available on Prime) is extremely charming. Jesse: For more on Margery Kempe, see episode 6, note 29; episode 7, note 23; and episode 8, note 4. For apophatic mysticism, see episode 7, notes 12 and 15 (and the whole section on Marguerite Porete.) 4/ Jesse: [The millennium] has to mark something. What does it mark? Em: Bigger fines at Blockbuster video. For our younger listeners, during the “Y2K Crisis,” people were worried that when the year turned to “2000,” computers would read it as “00” and assume it was 1900, thereby somehow messing up a bunch of things. This was solved by people updating computers to read a date stamp with a four-digit year instead of a two-digit one, and nothing happened, except in a few cases overdue videos were found to have absurd fees (which were then waived). For our even younger listeners, Blockbuster Video was a place you could go to if you wanted to rent video cassettes and DVDs in the days before internet-based streaming services. The last functioning Blockbuster Video is in Bend, OR. 5/ Back in the late 90s/early 2000s there was a series of movies about Americans fighting the end of the world: Independence Day, Armageddon, Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, and The Core are just a few of the films in this genre. Will Smith does actually literally punch an alien in the face in Independence Day. [I love Will Smith, and I love this scene (relevant moment at 0:46.)–Jesse] Jesse: Monster movies can signify many things, but Godzilla’s apocalyptic sensibility is a direct response to nuclear war, which had made the end of the world suddenly appear to be an achievable goal for humanity. Specifically, Godzilla is a response to the US dropping two atomic bombs on Japan and causing a humanitarian catastrophe in a manner not previously seen in global history. So while the movie contains the message that humanity has caused its own destruction (by awakening Godzilla), there’s also the stark reminder that only the US has ever dropped a nuclear bomb on a country, and that country was Japan. 6/ Supernova records: Supernova SN 185, which appeared in 185 CE, was the earliest supernova to make it into human records, although some researchers have suggested that HB9, which happened around 4600 BCE, may have been captured in rock carvings in Kashmir, India. 7/ Eschatology: The study of the end of the world. [Quote from Bynum and Freedman, page 3.–Jesse] Jesse: For an example of Christ at the Last Judgment in a rainbow nimbus, see Giotto’s Last Judgment in the Scrovegni or Arena Chapel. The Doomsday pageant from the Middle English York Cycle play was produced by the Mercers, and a very famous document (the Mercers’ Indenture) from 1433 details all the items used in the pageant, including “A cloude & ij peces of rainbow of tymber” or “a cloud and two pieces of rainbow made of timber.” Presumably, the cloud and rainbow covered the “brandreth of Iren” (or iron) that Jesus sat on when he was lowered from and lifted back up to heaven at the beginning and end of the pageant. The document is reprinted in the Records of Early English Drama (or REED) York, volume 1, pages 55–56. 8/ The poem is “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. The play is A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry. Jesse: Lorraine Hansberry’s father case, Hansberry vs. Lee, deals specifically with restrictive covenants. Harlem by Langston Hughes What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? Em: Redlining was a relatively common practice for quite a long time–technically, the term is used for any systematic denial of services to any group(s) of people. So if a bank were giving loans to White people with lower incomes but denying loans to Black people with the same or higher incomes, that is redlining. But so would be the po

Summary Come with us into Hell. We’ll accompany Dante and Virgil as they pass through the nine circles and out into purgatory and heaven. On the way, we’ll chat about Margery Kemp and Julian of Norwich, Hellboy, D&D, Giotto’s Scrovengi Chapel, and the tendency of ogliarchs to use philanthropy to try and make people like them. Notes and Annotations 1/ Minne/affective piety: see episode 7, note 1. 2/ Hildegard: see episode 6, notes 17 and 23. Marguerite Porete: see episode 7, notes 15 and 17. 3/ Jesse: Julian of Norwich: see episode 5, note 3 and episode 7, note 22. Jesus tells Julian that “Sin is necessary, but all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well” and “What is impossible to you is not impossible to me” (225, 233). This translation is from the Paulist Press translation of Julian’s Showings, translated by Colledge and Walsh. The original is in the Watson and Jenkins edition, pp. 209, 223. 4/ Jesse: Margery Kemp: see episode 6, note 29 and episode 7, note 23. Margery Kempe wrote one of the first (if not the first) autobiographies in English: The Book of Margery Kemp. Also see the British Library page. I recommend the Norton Critical translation by Lynn Staley, which I’m quoting in this episode (p. 117). The original is edited by Barry Windeatt (p. 303 for the quotes in this episode). 5/ Dante: Writer, failed politician, egoist. [“Failed politician” is a little unfair–he’s probably a better person for having been on the side that got exiled. I think he’d agree though–and with “egoist” too. –Jesse] 7/ For the terminally curious, here is the D&D Chick tract. I like that this comic includes two young women in the D&D group and…apparently the DM is some older woman? Anyway, it’s extremely unrealistic that the DM would just kill off a character like that. It’s very rude. Serious D&D players can hang onto their characters for years, and killing off a character permanently is a pretty intense situation. Also I have never been invited to join a coven devoted to ANY deity after participating in D&D, which honestly is a little disappointing. Interesting and relevant side story, I’ve also been involved in the creation of a D&D adventure that started in limbo and worked its way through Dante’s Inferno. [So awesome! I want in on that adventure.–Jesse] Jesse: In Medieval Crossover, Barbara Newman points out that “for us, the secular is the normative, unmarked default category, while the sacred is the marked, asymmetrical Other. In the Middle Ages it was the reverse” (viii). She goes on to comment that “the secular had to establish a niche” within the sacred paradigm that framed medieval society (viii). Barbara Newman, Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013) 8/ I think Jesse had read the Hellboy pancakes comic because I bought the collection that included it while I was staying with her in Manhattan one weekend, and true to form she read the whole thing before I flew out. [Yes that’s right!! I actually hadn’t read that one before, probably because it’s not based on . . . uh . . . myth/folklore. Now I own the complete Hellboy in nice editions, and I have a small figurine of young Hellboy with his pancakes. The figurine is marooned in my office on campus, and I can’t get back in the building without special arrangements because of quarantine, which is why I can’t include a picture of it sitting on my desk. When it comes to Hellboy, the Mignola illustrated ones are the best, but they’re all amazing, and the stand-alone short stories are all phenomenal. Mignola spoke at VCU last year, and it was magical.–Jesse] 9/ Jesse: Here is the Isaac Bashevis Singer book, The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah (not the miracle of light, oops–it’s been a while!). Jean Gerson: see episode 6, notes 25 and 27 and 33. John Ciardi, The Inferno. Here is the collected translation. For more on the famous inscription over the gate of Hell (and the complete translation and original text) see episode 7, note 25. 10/ [27:15] “Some [popes] . . . are much more bent on conquest and territory.” For those unfamiliar with the history of the Catholic Church, during this period the Pope had control not just of tiny Vatican City, but also a much larger swath of territory called the Papal States. This YouTube video is a good explanation of the origins of Vatican City. 11/ Interestingly (or not), Guelph is now the name of a suburb of Toronto. 12/ Purgatory, canto 6. I had no idea that there was ANY basis in reality of Romeo and Juliet. [The Montecchi and the Cappelletti–known to us as the Montagues and the Capulets–were apparently two factions in the political feuding of time.–J

Summary What is the purpose of sin, and why is it allowed? Why does Hell exist? When people go to Hell, do they stay there forever, and is there any way of getting them out? Em and Jesse take a look at the Medieval personification of God’s love and how several major female mystics tackled these questions, and then dive into Dante’s vision of Hell in The Inferno. Annotations and Corrections 1/ Minne: love personified. [Minne is also German/Germanic and is part of the medieval courtly love tradition (“Lady Love”). The women in this episode frequently make use of the conventions of courtly love–for example, portraying Christ as a knight. However, Minne also extends far, far beyond courtly love in the philosophies of affective piety described in this episode. Minne becomes a pillar of these women’s philosophies, and consequently it takes more than one episode to describe Minne fully. But we tried to provide a start! I specify Dutch here because of Hadewijch, who wrote in Middle Dutch.–Jesse] 2/ Hadewijch of Brabent or Antwerp. If you’re really interested in more on her philosophy, check out episode 237 of the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast. Jesse: Hadewijch lived in the first half of the thirteenth century presumably (based on her writings in the Brabant region). Her Wikipedia article is here. For more on Hadewijch and Minne, also see McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, pp. 199–222. 3/ [5:55] For reference, the printing press was invented in the West around 1440. (It was invented in China about 900 years earlier, in 593.) 4/ Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms. We should definitely talk about this as soon as we finish this series on mysticism and Hell. Also, this was one of my grad school readings, thanks.–Em 5/ We talk a bit in this episode and in several others about the change from writing in Latin to writing in “the Vernacular”–whatever the local language was. Dante and Chaucer are two early examples in their respective languages, but I’m not certain exactly when it became a “thing.” Certainly I think it must have started as education moved out of monasteries and into universities in the 12th century. [This seems like part of a future episode! I love the question of the vernacular. Manuscripts, writing, and illumination might be a future episode as well.–Jesse] Booker T. Washington is an example of someone who taught himself to read English. 6/ The Crusader Bible in our site header is actually in Latin, Persian, and Judeo-Persian (Persian written in Hebrew characters). See the Citations tab for links to more info on it! 7/ Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179)–see Episode 6 beginning around 34:00 and notes 17 and 23. 8/ Jesse: Poem 16 (this is a short excerpt, the full poem is pp. 168–171) in Hadewijch: The Complete Works, introduced and translated by Mother Columba Hart O.S.B. This is part of a series I mention frequently, The Classics of Western Spirituality, published by Paulist Press. 9/ Arma Christi: Episode 5, note 24. 10/ Phaedrus: I remember it as one of the more interesting of the Platonic dialogues, primarily because the main character in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance refers to himself as “Phaedrus,” and also because Socrates really seems to be low-key trying to seduce the guy he’s interviewing. Symposium: Probably the second-most famous of Plato’s dialogues (The Republic is the most famous). Here is Neal Patrick Harris singing the song “Origin of Love,” which is the story Jesse is referring to. (Wikipedia describes John Cameron Mitchell as “deeply Roman Catholic,” so there’s a chance he knew about Hadewijch. He’s also a former member of the Northwestern Theatre Mafia.) Gnosis: Knowledge. See also Gnosticism. The character of Tommy Gnosis in Hedwig is very purposefully named. 11/ South Park: I believe this is the episode under discussion. [Yes!! Say what you will, South Park can be brilliant. This episode really illustrates the “unpayable debt” quite well. Also, it’s Kyle (the Jewish character) who buys the unlimited credit card of course, NOT Stan. Kyle essentially lives out a parallel of the Passion throughout the episode. Cartman is obviously Judas.–Jesse] 12/ Apophatic mysticism: Here’s the Wikipedia article, but really you should check out the books on Marguerite Porete. See note 15 below.–Jesse 13/ Ted Chiang, “Hell Is the Absence of God,” in Your Life and Others, Tor, 2002. It feels like Chiang has written stories about a lot of what we talk about. 14/ Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit. I don’t have a preferred translation or anything, but here’s the Wikipedia page for a summary. 15/ Marguerite Porete: History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps did an episode on her, too. Interesting fact, from the 12th century on, Middle Ages glass mirrors would have been m

Summary From the feast of Corpus Christi to the mystical marriage between St. Catherine of Siena and Jesus Himself, Em and Jesse dive into the world of Medieval mysticism and affective piety, exploring the ways in which women were able to co-opt the stereotypes of men into positive portrayals of female piety. Brief content note–there’s nothing explicit, but we do mention circumcision in this episode. Annotations, Notes, and Corrections 1/ Kalamazoo is of course the big Medievalist conference. [Officially it’s called the International Congress on Medieval Studies. There’s a free wine hour, and for many years there was a mead tasting (that I hope will return). When I say “mead tasting”–I mean roughly 20 different kinds of meads and ales made in traditional ways. There is also a Saturday night dance–basically a high school homecoming dance with medievalists.–JN] Jesse: For those wondering about this Rover (weather balloon) reference from The Prisoner, here’s a clip. 2/ Another chance to look at that Hieronymous Bosch painting. 3/ Jesse: Rolle and Kirby are discussed in notes 28 and 29 from Episode 5: Hermits and Anchoresses. Bernard McGinn’s epic series A History of Western Christian Mysticism currently contains 6 volumes labeled The Presence of God vol 1–6. However, volume 6 comes in 3 parts (part 3 is being published July 2020). If you want to know something about Western mysticism, check out one of the volumes helpfully listed at the bottom of his Wikipedia page. McGinn also wrote this book on Meister Eckhart (completely separate from the series). This Amazon link should take you to a semi-complete list of the texts as well. In this episode (and the last episode), I mention: The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great Through the 12 Century, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism 1200–1350, and The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism 1350–1550. 4/Jesse: Officially, Corpus Christi is celebrated the Thursday or Sunday after the Sunday after Pentecost. (The Sunday after Pentecost is Trinity Sunday, and Corpus Christi is celebrated the following Thursday or Sunday. So, it’s roughly 11 days to two weeks after Pentecost.) Em: [8:30] Inca Bodies and the Body of Christ: another chance to recommend my grad school reading list. 5/ [9:00] Flower mosaics. Jesse: Origins of all kinds are tricky, but we can trace the origins of the Feast of Corpus Christi. We cannot trace the origins of theatre, as I say here very quickly. While the creation of theatre around the Festival of Dionysus in fourth/fifth century BCE Athens is extremely important to the history of theatre in what we now define as the “West,” to the extent that this early theatrical practice is “western,” it is important that “western” not be understood as a synonym for whiteness. 6/ [11:20] For those of us who didn’t ever really take a case-based language, genitive is the possessive case. 7/ Pope Urban the IV. One of only a few popes who got the job without first being a cardinal [I wasn’t aware you could do that. However, Wikipedia mentions a three-month vacancy between the previous pope dying and Urban’s election, so I guess they were a little desperate? Also, he wasn’t just Joe Shoemaker from down at the Forum, he was the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem (basically the bishop of Jerusalem I guess) and former Archdeacon of Liège, so he was pretty important.–Em] Jesse: Fourth Lateran Council. 8/ Proto-Protestant Heresies: Martin Luther’s revolt really got off the ground, I think (I have read somewhere), because he had the backing of a lot of relatively powerful people in the region and there was a lot of general anger at the Catholic Church in the peasantry, meaning that it was impossible for the Church / the Inquisition to stamp out the fire he lit. I feel like this will have to be its own show though.–Em 9/ Wycliffites, named for John Wycliffe. [Wycliff’s followers were also–more famously–called Lollards. There were also the Hussites who followed Jan Hus. And so many more! You get the idea.–Jesse] 10/ “When you’re being tested for heresy…” i.e. by the Inquisition. Which–you could just lie to them. Although that raises its own issues. [Also, you were probably being tortured. When I say tested or “proven” from the Latin probare (verb), I mean tortured. A probatio generally wasn’t pleasant–we’ll address this in a future episode!–Jesse] 11/ Quote from Dyan Elliot. [Huge shout out to Dyan Elliott generally and also to Proving Woman: Female Spirituality And Inquisitional Culture In The Later Middle Ages. Notice that the “proving” in Elliott’s title is taken from the inquisitorial sense discussed in the note above, from the Latin probare.–Je

Summary Em and Jesse begin a journey into the world of Medieval mysticism with a discussion of hermits and anchorites/anchoresses. With some interesting discussions of cats, Michel Foucault, Plato, and Siddhartha Gautama. Annotations, Notes, and Corrections 0/ There are some sound issues in this episode–I (Em) recorded in what sounds like a cave, and Jesse’s mic is a little staticy and flat for some reason–I suspect she accidentally recorded with the wrong mic. Sorry! [Actually, I turned the gain way down and sat further away–I thought I was being too loud before!–JN] 1/ Quarantine: See our episode on the plague, especially note 22. 2/ The woman who died in 1990 was Maria-Nazerina of Jesus. She became an anchoress in 1945, meaning she went 45 years speaking once per year. (She appears to have been much stricter in her observance than many of the Medieval anchoresses we’ll discuss, in that she did only speak to her spiritual director instead of also offering counsel to anyone who wanted it.) Another modern anchoress we found is Sister Rachel Denton, who is arguably less strict than the Medieval women–for example, she gives seminars and uses the internet, and I think she has a garden. [Christina of Markyate is a good example of an anchoress who was in a tiny cell for a while…she shows up in more detail later in the episode.–JN] 3/ [4:57] My cat has occasionally caught mice, but we can’t rule out that there was something wrong with them that he managed to get them. [Julian’s cat comes from the Ancrene Wisse‘s Outer Rule, Part 8, which allowed anchoresses to have a cat. Here is the quote (lines 76–77: “Ye, mine leove sustren, bute yef neod ow drive ant ower meistre hit reade, ne schulen habbe na beast bute cat ane.” Translation: “My dear sisters, unless need drives you and your director advises it, you must not have any animal except a cat” (trans. Savage and Watson, p. 201). Here are some Julian of Norwich images with her cat (that she presumably had, because of Ancrene Wisse)! Here is the image of Julian with her cat in Norwich Cathedral (and here is the full window where you can see her name). Here is the second window in Norwich Cathedral of Julian (no cat–Julian is the far bottom right figure; here’s a close up). Here’s another great image of Julian and her cat from St Thomas, Earlham Road, Norwich. This window also includes Julian’s famous statement–a quote from Christ, who told Julian that “All shall be well.” We’ll discuss this full statement at more length in the Love and Hell episode in a few weeks. Here is a famous icon of Julian with her cat by Robert Lentz, OFM. (The cat pictured here is a legendary cat of great soul, Magnificat, the protector of all Northwestern University graduate students in medieval studies). Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson, eds. Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works. New York: Paulist Press, 1991.–JN] 4/ St. Anthony (251–356): of St. Anthony’s Fire (a disease caused by ergot) fame. Also known as St. Anthony the Great, because there were at least eleven saints named Anthony. Nobody does it better; I mean, he lived half his life in the desert and died at 105? He must’ve been doing something right. 5/ The Temptation of St. Anthony, by Hieronomyous Bosch: This link has a pretty good scan of the panels,and Wikipedia has a bigger but slightly less well photographed version. As with all of Bosch’s paintings, there is a lot going on there–weird bird people, a fish that is also a boat for fishermen, a flying fish, naked people pretending to be the legs of a table… 6/ Theater of Cruelty. [Here’s Artaud, and here’s The Theatre and Its Double (Bosch is mentioned on page 87 of this translation/edition).–JN] [Side note: We don’t have any Amazon affiliation or whatever–if you can order any of the books we mention through your local bookstore, we 100% support that! –Em] 7/ Em: I’m laughing because, as we’ve all recently learned, after a while being alone with your inner thoughts kinda sucks. (And I say this as a writer, which is to say someone who finds my inner thoughts almost infinitely entertaining.) 8/ The transfiguration of Christ. Jesse: “At the end of all things” is a shout out to Frodo and Sam in Lord of the Rings, when Frodo’s work is completed (parallels to Christ, see the Passover and Easter episode, part 1)–Remember, Tolkein was a medievalist! Eagles are divine symbols in many traditions–Zeus had an eagle–but in Christianity they also represent divine revelation. John the Evangelist, author of Revelations–the book on the Apocalypse–is symbolized by an eagle.) 9/ Foucault also talks about the replacement of the confession to a priest with the confession to a psychologist (in The History of

Summary Em and Jesse continue their discussion of Passover and Easter, including the Venerable Bede’s take on Easter’s pagan origins, blood libel, and some long digressions about monasteries, Pope Francis, Saint Francis, and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Annotations, Citations, and Corrections 1/ [1:44] Miriam: We actually didn’t talk about her at all in the first part. She was the sister of Aaron and Moses, and she is quite an interesting figure in her own right–a prophet and leader. She had powers over water. Her cup is called the kos Miriam and I believe it is generally filled with water. [Yes, in the Old Testament or Torah–specifically Numbers 20:1–2–we are told that Miriam died and was buried, and there was no water for the congregation. Tradition–i.e., the Talmud–tells us that during the 40 years in the desert, Miriam had a well (Moses was given manna, the food, and Miriam the well, for water). When Miriam died, the well dried up. There is also a midrash about Miriam’s well, so modern feminism has simply chosen to highlight an old symbol with a new tradition (Miriam’s cup at the Seder). Miriam is also sometimes seen as the leader and teacher of the women (as Moses and Aaron were for the men). In Exodus 15:20–21, Miriam is described as a prophet who led the women in singing and dancing for the Lord (with timbrels!). This imagery is extremely important not only to modern feminists but also to female mystics in the Middle Ages.–JN] Jesse: The bread/orange section isn’t particularly clear. Miriam’s cup is OLD symbolism (see note above), but its inclusion in the Seder (usually next to Elijah’s cup) is fairly new (a few decades). Another fairly recent addition (same time frame, a few decades) is the orange, which now sits proudly on many Seder plates. The orange is completely new, and stems from Dr. Susannah Heschel speaking at the Oberlin College Hillel in the early 1980s. There are a lot of urban legends about this story, and the real version can be found here and in the book The Women’s Passover Companion. Essentially, Dr. Heschel was looking for a way to be inclusive not only of women but also of the LGBTQ+ community–Passover is a story about conquering exclusion and finding community. She came across a phrase in a written story (it was not yelled at her, as many believe) that said a lesbian has as much place in Judaism as a crust of bread on a Seder plate. Some people have chosen to put bread on their Seder plates as defiant symbolism, but bread is forbidden at Passover, and its inclusion essentially taints everything else at the table. Dr. Heschel rightly decided that including bread on a Seder plate did not symbolize inclusion; rather, it compared the LGBTQ+ community to impurity. So, Dr. Heschel chose an orange, which has now come to symbolize all who feel excluded from the community. The orange represents the fruitful and colorful contributions of all who may feel unnoticed, unimportant, or unwanted (but especially the LGBTQ+ community, who are the origin and foundation of the practice!). 2/ For an interesting fictionalized retelling of the story of the creation of Superman, see Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay (Random House, 2000). 3/ [3:11] ” ‘El’ meaning G-d…for some reason the name of G-d is always plural.” This is the same syllable you see in many modern Hebrew-derived names. Daniel = G-d is my judge. Nathaniel = G-d has given. Yisrael = G-d contends. [Jacob is given the name Israel after struggling with the angel in Genesis 32:24–28. The Israelite are the descendants of Jacob.–JN] The suffix “im” in “Elohim” is a plural marker in Hebrew. Why “Elohim” is always used rather than “Eloha” (which would be the singular) is a more complex question than I would have thought, and I really fell down a rabbit hole trying to answer it. So: it may be related to a previous pantheon (in an earlier tribal religion) in which one deity became more important than all the others; there are some theories that the creation story in the book of Genesis comes from the Enûma Eliš, which is the Babylonian creation myth, but retold to have one deity instead of many. If your interest is piqued by this, you may enjoy this Wikipedia page, and here is Chabad’s explanation (this particular page makes reference to a couple of more esoteric bits of Jewish mysticism we will have to discuss in the future. Also, note that in Hebrew there are a lot of different names for G-d. If you are now thinking that Judaism has a fascination with words, you are right).–Em Jesse: Yes, Elohim is presumably plural because gods had been plural–there had been pantheons. A singular deity with pluralistic traits (and a plural referent) makes a lot of sense–it’s what people were used to. Also, the opening o

Summary Em and Jesse retell the story of Passover, and then discuss the story of the crucifixion in the New Testament and how the two dovetail. In the process, they cover Medieval traditions surrounding Easter week in a wide-ranging discussion that also touches on Gilgamesh, the harrowing of hell, and Peeps. Citations, Annotations, and Corrections 1/ While listening back to this, I had a moment where I realized how many new varieties of yogurt are available now than were available when I was in college. For those unfamiliar, the forbidden Passover grains are wheat, barley, rye, oats, and spelt, and “kitniyot,” which means “legumes,” but in Ashkenazi tradition is a category that includes rice, corn , soybeans, lentils, and products derived from them. For weird historic reasons, potatoes are okay. (Also the key to really surviving while keeping kosher for Passover if you’re vegetarian is to keep Sephardic Kosher. Or eat a lot of sad potatoes.) 2/ Rivers are powerful symbols of purification and cleansing, travel and liberation, and boundaries. The Israelites had to cross the Red Sea to reach freedom, but the Biblical (New Testament) importance of the River Jordan–where John the Baptist baptized Jesus–becomes synchronous with the idea of freedom in the USA, where rivers formed boundaries between Slave states and Free states. While the Mississippi looms largest in the mythological psyche of the USA, the most famous crossing in American literature is probably Eliza’s escape across the frozen Ohio River in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. No artistic statement on the subject is greater than Alvin Ailey’s, seen here in a clip of the second movement (“Take Me to the Water”) from Revelations. –JN 3/ Yul Brynner: Hotter than a slave owner. But also–the guy was from Vladivostok, but played, among others, a pharaoh and a Thai king. C.f. “The Romans in Films” from Mythologies by Roland Barthes (Editions du Seuil, 1952; trans. by Annette Lavers, Paladin, 1972) . (I realize that this is a podcast about Medieval history and not a chance to critique films that came out in 1956. But all of this is to say–Ramses didn’t look like Brynner, and Moses didn’t look like Charlton Heston. That is Hollywood whitewashing.–Em) 4/ [7:30] “…People who are trying to derive that the Earth began on October 15th, 5032 BC…” Actually, October 23, 4004 BCE. Em was slightly off. 5/ The whole discussion of “the Egyptians built the pyramids” reminds me of the short story “Tower of Babylon” by Ted Chiang (in Story of Your Life and Others, Tor, 2002) . [Nat Geo article on the so-called “workers’ villages.”–JN] 6/ Suzan-Lori Parks, who is an amazing playwright, does “Watch Me Work”. This is a public art piece, but also an opportunity to carve out time for writing. Since we taped the episode, I’ve done one, and it was pretty cool. She works for 20 min (and so does everyone else), and then she answers questions from the audience for 40 minutes. [SLP is the BEST.–JN] 7/ I should clarify: Moses is allowed to lead the Israelites to the promised land, and he is technically allowed to see the promised land (which he famously does from the top of Mount Nebo before dying), but he’s not allowed in. In War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), Caesar similarly leads the apes to the promised land and dies within sight of it.–JN 8/ Transubstantiation: the conversion of the substance of the Eucharist (bread and wine) into the body and blood of Christ during communion. Consubstantial (the word I am trying to remember): of the same substance or essence, often used with the trinity (e.g., Christ is consubstantial with God the Father). As I allude to, a significant amount of my knowledge about Catholicism comes from reading Ulysses (and other books–Paradise Lost, Inferno, The Master and Margarita, etc.). –Em 9/ Triduum: From the evening on Holy Thursday until the evening of Easter Sunday. It sounds like I’m saying it to myself as “tri-deum,” which is–not right.–Em 10/ Palmesel donkey. Here is one in the collection at the Met from the fifteenth century. It weighs 182 lbs and is 62 inches tall, making it basically life-size. 11/ Palms symbolized victory. Palm branches were thrown before Jesus on his triumphant return to Jerusalem to signify his (future) victory–i.e., Jesus’s return is being compared to the triumphant return of a Roman conqueror. Jesus has not yet been victorious (his victory will be to conquer death one week later on Easter Sunday), but the fact of his return makes it certain that he will achieve his victory. Throughout the Middle Ages, martyrs are pictured with palm branches to signify their martyrdom–a spiritual victory.–JN 12/ In case anyone is curious or (like me) confused about the terminology, the Septuagint is actually a translation of the Hebrew bible into Greek that was made for use by Greek-speaking Jews. It also include

“Death and famine stalk the land like two great stalking things.” — Blackadder Summary It’s the Black Death, the original plague! Em and Jesse discuss the outbreaks of plague that bookended the Middle Ages–the Plague of Justinian (around 540 CE) and the better-known outbreak that spread across Asia into Western Europe and eventually hit the British Isles in the 1300s. We discuss Medieval responses to plague, such as quarantine, scientific inquiry, and pograms, as well as the ways the plague is reflected in literature of the time. Notes, Citations, and Corrections 1/ Sorry about the sound quality this episode. We both had some various technical difficulties. 2/ No letters! We know Latin, and we know that technically the word bacteria is plural, and the word bacterium is singular. 3/ Notice the beginning and end of my “pretend I don’t know anything” interviewing technique. For the entire rest of the episode it’s totally clear I know at least a bit about the plague, so I don’t know why I decided to start off like I was totally clueless. Oh well. (Related suggestion: if you’re interested in the biological nitty gritty of the plague, check out the relevant episodes of This Podcast Will Kill You. They talk a lot about the actual physical effects of the disease and the bacteria behind it, Y. pestis. Fair warning, it’s a bit gory.) 4/ Concerning plagues that are not THE plague, if you ever want to really freak yourself out, check out this story on Smallpox (full article here if you don’t have access to the New Yorker archives). There is a really good reason, in my opinion, why it was not only one of the first diseases humans started experimenting with vaccinating against, but why it was the first eradicated. 5/ Just to add–the San Francisco plague outbreak of 1900–1904–we didn’t discuss it because we already had enough plague to discuss, but it was shockingly like the current COVID-19 outbreak in several ways, including the quarantining of boats in San Francisco Bay and a lot of blame falling (unfairly) on Chinese Americans. 6/ Around 6:50 Jesse mentions an outbreak in the late 1900s, but she means late 1800s (late 19th century). [Again, I get excited and misspeak! I’m working on this.–JN] 7/ The death rate of plague with antibiotics is about 11% (with the CDC noting it’s hard to study because of a paucity of cases). That’s…not great. 8/ Monica H. Green, “When Numbers Don’t Count: Changing Perspectives on the Justinianic Plague,” EIDOLON (Nov. 18, 2019), https://eidolon.pub/when-numbers-dont-count-56a2b3c3d07. Monica Green, ed., Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death, The Medieval Globe, vol. 1, no. 1 (Arc Medieval Press, 2014), https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/1/. Google her work! 9/ “Three to four thousand years ago” was around the year 2000 BCE. The first Egyptian pyramid was already 600 years old at that point. [I also mention early Aegean and Greek civilization as reference points. Cycladic civilization is roughly 3200–1050 BCE, Minoan civilization is roughly 2700–1100 BCE, and Mycenean civilization is roughly 1600–1100 BCE. 1100 BCE was a system collapse, possibly the one remembered in The Iliad as the Trojan War.–JN] 10/ Rats! A reminder (in case we weren’t clear enough) that fleas are primarily responsible for transmitting the plague. Rats can carry the flea, but so can other rodents (some squirrels, for example). Also, not all rats are equally likely to carry the flea. Be nice to rats! 11/ “If you saw a rabbit while you were pregnant, it could make you give birth to a rabbit or something.” Or more likely a baby with a harelip (the term dates from the mid-16th century). There were weird case reports of women giving birth to things like rabbits and cats (e.g., Mary Toft in the 1720s). Unclear to me how much of this is hysteria/some other mental illness vs outright fraud. [Ooooo, I can’t explain it all here, but hysteria and the medicalization of gynecology would make a great episode, if anyone is interested. In a relevant context, Horrox quotes Jean de Venette, who suggested that imagination as well as contagion could make someone sick (i.e., someone imagined they were going to become sick, so they did): “death and sickness came by imagination, or by contact with others and consequent contagion” (p. 55). Horrox explains more on page 107. For this and many other sources from our episode, see Rosemary Horrox, ed. and trans., The Black Death, Manchester Medieval Sources, book 1 (Manchester University Press: 1994), pp. 41–45 (link)–JN] 12/ (26:37) Jesse: The basilisk…who we all know because of J.K. Rowling. Me: Right… (you can actually hear my brain panicking as I try to remember whether it’s a lizard or a snake. Now, looking at some pictures, I can see that it is described as a “serpent” but occasionally drawn with legs.) [The basilisk is the king of snakes–basil from Greek basileus, or k