malyssmakneile

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Medieval Fitness: How to Exercise Like a 15th-Century University Student

Looking for fitness tips? Here’s how people stayed in shape in the 15th century.

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The crown is a burden, an oath, and a promise. The crown should be the mark of the shepherd; the promise to care, defend, and love. Should you find yourself subject to a tyrant, your king is not the shepherd, but the wolf.

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Oh yeah I forgot I did a scribal in November, one with an insane turnaround

Swapped it for the fifty-six buttonholes on my cote

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Whitby Abbey, England (by bruce cole)

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What are your top five pathetic little guys from manuscripts? Just the scrungliest creatures you've ever found? I want some truly PITIFUL medieval beasts here Miles, your top five wet little guys.

cat scared of and/or having an existential crisis about the eucharist (look at its eyes. it’s Seen Things.)

2. weird nervous frog with unfortunately yonic body from my favorite manuscript that usually does a good job with making creatures cute but NOT with this guy. why is he shaped like that and why did you give him anxiety

3. another frog with anxiety, he said 😬 (real) (my personal favorite. of all time.)

4. this fucked up hedgehog that looks like some kind of small bug

and 5. this “giraffe” 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨 like I’m so sorry mx. manuscript illustrator but you cannot just throw a mane on a pissed-off elephant and call that a giraffe

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Book of hours for Rome use, France, circa 1495

from The Philadelphia Museum of Art

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"may this great plague pass by me and my friends, and restore us once more to joy and gladness"

Feeling a powerful kinship with this scribe from 1350 today.

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Me when I see the word beaʃte

In my head: ah! The archaic form of the letter s! Being a casual scholar of linguistics myself I am well aware that though it resembles the letter f in modern typography in fact it is phonetically identical to s! How foolish it would be to stumble into such a simple lexiconical pitfall!

Me aloud to myself every time: beeft

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Sword, Germany, circa 1620-1630

from The Philadelphia Museum of Art

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Irish Style Gold Lunula, Coulter, 2300BCE, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh

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doesn’t this make you feel absolutely wild

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You need to set up enrichment for your knights or else they will escape their enclosure and begin pillaging and burning down the homes of your peasantry. Your castle might benefit from a tournament or perhaps some inspiring stories about proper manners at dinner time.

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Whoops I'm Baron of Lions Gate 🤷

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When I was 19 or 20, I sewed myself a wool dress for medieval re-enactments. I hated it almost as soon as I put it on. The bodice was cut wrong; the lacing was uneven; the colour was garish; the front closure was historically inaccurate; the embellishments were sewn on with terrible thread. Wearing it, I was constantly aware of its myriad flaws.

Then in my twenties I hit my adult metabolism and didn’t fit into any of my old clothes anymore. I gave my old dresses to my foster mother, who sells costumes for a living, and the green dress sold. It entered the local medieval re-enactment secondhand economy.

Every time I go to an event, someone different is wearing my green dress. It draws my eyes because it’s a lovely colour and the fabric—real wool and enough of it—moves beautifully with the wearer’s body. I never recognize it at first, because every wearer has worn it a different way; it can be mixed and matched, dressed up and down, moved around a good century of history. From ten feet away its lacing looks elegant, its embellishments beautiful gracenotes. I think: Oh my god, that dress looks beautiful. Wait a minute, that’s MY DRESS.

That dress teaches me, every time I see it, to stop looking at myself through such critical eyes. That dress doesn’t just look good, it looks better than most other dresses in its category, because I put in the time and the effort (including using pliers to force a needle through six layers of wool) to make sure it was done right.

It’s my reminder that sometimes the things I do are actually good, and if I indulge my natural tendency to criticize myself in everything, I’ll end up missing when I’m actually awesome.

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In two weeks I'll be invested as Baron of Lions Gate. What the hell.