#janina ramirez

[notfspurejam]

Pictures: in conversation with The League of Gentlemen star Mark Gatiss

[richaldis]

I've just started reading Janina Ramirez' Femina which starts with a discussion about Emily Davison, the suffragette who threw herself under the King's horse at the Derby. The section is about how she and many of her peers were medivalists who revered Joan of Arc. But Ramirez also mentions the hate mail Davison got from men on her deathbed, something I didn't know. It seems the world has changed little in the last 110 years, at least when it come to a certain type of man.

[bookymcbookface]

“Femina, A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it” by Dr Janina Ramirez

[curiouspluviophile]

[hoerbahnblog]

Zeichen & Zeiten: Janina Ramirez – "Femina" – eine Rezension von Constanze Matthes

Zeichen & Zeiten: Janina Ramirez – “Femina” – eine Rezension von Constanze Matthes (Hördauer 11 Minuten) https://literaturradiohoerbahn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ZuZ-Femina-Janina-Ramirez-upload.mp3   „Es gab sie noch immer, diese Welt in ihrer erfreulichen Mittelmäßigkeit.“  „Ob nun vergessen, übersehen oder absichtlich herausgeschrieben – es ist ein Wunder, dass überhaupt weibliche…

[medievalcat]

If it is hard to get a handle on Cathars generally, then it is even more so with regards to Cathar women. Accounts are contradictory, with some stating they could hold the very highest roles within communities, while others say there was 'no great tolerance for women.' A role call of fascinating individuals come and go with passing references in inquisitorial records: Berengere 'put aside the sect of the heretics, was reconciled and received a husband.' Fabrisa kept a group of Cathars safe at her castle in Montreal, but was forced to flee from crusaders. Berbeigueira was a believer for 30 years and had to watch as her husband, on his deathbed, expelled all Cathars from their home. From these records, we can be sure that many women were drawn to Catharism.

Femina, Janina Ramirez

[lianaofrome]

@theeurocat asked me about KEIINO fitting in my viking book series. They fit so majestically than they even match the characters now.

Remember I told you about Alva and Fenrir, her tame wolf. In this second book they make friend with this boy Alva's age. He's called Alfred, but I'm keeping, for 'unknown' (😜) reasons shortening it to Fred or Freddie.

And there you have Alva (Alexandra), Alfred (Fred) and Fenrir (a wolf, the animal Tom represents in the MV) having adventures while Alva tastes her Spirit of a Shield Maiden (a Viking thing). And the book ends as Alva sees the spirit of a Warrior Queen on the sky.

Funniest thing #1: The book has been written for like a year. The similarities are an accident.

Funniest thing #2: The author is also a documentary host. She was on Norway during spring filming and mentioned in Twitter she was watching a joik performance. So, I'm here thinking she should ask her joikers if they can put her in contact with Fred for start with the movie soundtrack.

[notfspurejam]

 Mark Gatiss tells Janina Ramirez how his work as an actor comes with exciting experiences that fulfill his love and fascination of history.

[medievalcat]

Perhaps the most famous female Cathar was Esclarmonde de Foix. She was a member of one of the most important families in the Languedoc, and ruled Foix as regent when her husband died in 1204. Esclarmonde wielded great power during her lifetime. She witnessed documents alongside her brother, like the settlement in 1198 between the Cistercians of Boulbonne and the Count of Foix, so we know she had enough secular influence to sign charters. She was also responsible, along with Raymond de Pereille, for rebuilding the fortress at Montsegur to protect the remaining Cathars from the Albigensian Crusade. While she may not have lived long enough to see its fall during the siege, her actions offered shelter to families that had been driven many hundreds of miles into exile by decades of persecution. But it is her role in Cathar preaching that is most often cited.

She was made a perfect and ran a house for Cathars in Pamiers. In the same city, two years after the death of her husband, Esclarmonde attended a council where representatives of Catholics, Cathars and Waldensians presented their beliefs. It ran for a month and each spokesperson was given a full day to argue their position. To the disdain of the predominantly male council, Esclarmonde was invited to present on Cathar beliefs. She took the stage but was heckled by the Catholic representative, Brother Etienne de Miserichorde: 'Go, Madam, to spin your distaff. It is not appropriate for you to speak in a debate of this kind.' The misogynistic response has enflamed centuries of commentators who see in Esclarmonde a proto-feminist. Indeed, she has developed legendary status in the Pays Cathare, even though it is difficult to gather facts such as where and when she died. Her involvement in a council and her derogatory treatment by a member of the clergy highlights both the positions to which Cathar women could rise, and the destruction their reputations could suffer at the hands of the orthodox church.

[lianaofrome]

How weird is that I am utterly in love with a character from a YA novel?

Uncle Magnus owns my heart.

[docudocu-blog]

Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings

Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of illuminated manuscripts that were custom-made for kings and explores the medieval world they reveal.

De casibus virorum illustrium

Giovanni Boccaccio, De casibus virorum illustrium, c.1480, Bruges.

[medievalcat]

Emma [of Normandy]'s control over her children, willingness to shift allegiance and adaptability to change had a huge influence on eleventh-century English politics. Wife of kings, mother of kings, landholder and game-player, Emma embodies the complexities of the decades leading up to the Battle of Hastings.

Two major recent developments have thrust Emma back into the limelight. First, a copy of the text written in her praise, the Economium Emmae Reginae, was discovered in the Devon Record Office in 2008. It had been languishing in the library of Powderham Castle for 500 years, when the holdings of Breamore Priory were claimed by the Earl of Devon after the Reformation. It then moved to the Record Office in the 1960s, but it took another 45 years for its relevance to come to light. Only one other copy of the text exists, held in the British Library. But the two texts show a major difference: the first version concludes by extolling the virtues of Emma's son with Cnut, Harthacnut, while the second praises her son with Aethelred, Edward the Confessor. Emma was hedging her bets, commissioning two versions of the same text with different outcomes.

Femina, Janina Ramirez

[lianaofrome]

This was going to be a question for @gotham-ruaidh but it kinda grew into a full analysis of the adults main characters of the book Riddle of the Runes by Janina Ramirez, from the perspective of an Outlander follower.

Starting from the beginning, to those of you who did not know about the book until know. Riddle of the Runes is a YA novel, but still interesting for adults (I’m 29), it tells the story of 12 years-old Alva, a redhead smart, stubborn and brave viking girl living at a small northern Norway village of Kilsgard, going in search of a treasure apparently left there by her father, Bjorn, whose disappearance during a viking expedition  seems to have left a strain on her family (her mother Briana, her uncle Magnus and toddler brother Ivan).

But what this YA novel has to do with Outlander beyond a stubborn ginger main character and a common name? Well, that’s down to the adults.

Uncle Magnus

Uncle Magnus is the brother of Alva’s father. He’s some sort of investigator at the village, ordered by Jarl Erik, the chief of the settlement, to find the truth about the mysterious disappearance of two English men on the forests around Kilsgard. He’s Murtagh-ish, and everyone I showed the book with Outlander knowledge seems to agree of that common thread between both characters, both looking grumpy and even rude but caring and worrisome with their loved ones. Uncle Magnus has seen violence too, he’s part of the “Scars on the back” club and he seems to feel ashamed for something he and Bjorn did during a raid at the English monastery of Lindisfarne and that makes him even more fiercely protective towards Alva. But he also knows that when someone gets in her head he better leave her doing her way, that’s the reason he lets her accompany him on his investigation.

Brianna

I must call her Viking Brianna to differentiate her from Outlander Brianna but the first thing you must know about her is that, well, she isn’t actually Viking. Brianna, as Claire, is an Outlander. An Irish princess who somehow ended up on a small village on Norway. No actual backdrop story has been given yet, but once I watched this documentary talking about how Dublin was a Viking centre for the movement of slaves and prisoners, so, forcefully taken from her place and then saved by, and married to, the handsome ginger warrior is not out of the cards yet, and it would be historically fitting. Brianna is as brave and smart as her daughter, but also big Mama Bear who would do anything for the security of her children, and also conscious that, like Claire on the XVIII Century Scotland, her outsider condition makes her vulnerable, and more so now her husband is Odin knows where. 

Honestly I think they would like each others, Murtagh and Magnus, Claire and Brianna. Murtagh and Magnus could connect on their loyalty and protectiveness, specially towards their respective stubborn ginger heads. Whilst Claire Brianna could bond around their maternal instinct, their outsiders background and the common feeling of be apart of their loved ones.

For now there’s only one book and another one on the way, so, no more traces of were the story goes and little trace of Bjorn’s travel beyond he got lost somewhere on Francia (France) and I hope neither me, nor Alva, Brianna or Magnus have to wait 20 years for find him, because I’ll be rioting.

[lianaofrome]

Janina Ramirez on a documentary about Vikings: In 793...

My Nerd  Brain *Plays the Horrible Histories Viking Song*