#medieval parenting

[moon-meerkat]

Please help me find a post for a class

a while ago i saw a post about a medieval text instructing parents to, if their child learning to walk tripped over an object, scold the object in question. i really want to mention it in the short historical part of a presentation for my class on Child and Teenager Rights, but tumblr being tumblr, i haven't been able to find it. i would REALLY appreciate if someone were able to send it my way, esp by wednesday evening

[mysharona1987]

By Gemma Correll.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Me, watching "Wish" with the 5 year old I babysit:

"You see! Asha said 'hello' in Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish, indicating a medieval Spanish culture! This island is probably located near Spain where there was a great comingling of Muslim, Jewish, and Catholic Spanish cultures and the al-Adalus period, while not as utopian as we would like to remember it..."

And she was just looking at me like

i have no idea how to talk to children

[lilybug-02]

Artfight against @ejsuperstar ft. The Mad King and Chip. They're both so evil. I hope they have the most extravagant downfall of any onscreen villain.

This interaction is based on a little fic writing >:)

[litcest]

Next time someone tries to shame you for writing that incest AU, remember that the Medievals wrote many incest AU for their favourites saints.

From Judas Iscariot, to Pope Gregorius, to Saint Albans and Saint Andreas of Crete, a favourite pastime for writers seemed to be to create fake biographies for these religious figures who had lived centuries earlier, and include salacious details, such as unwittingly marrying their mothers before embarking in a journey in search for penitence.

[hedwig221b]

Heeeeyyy 💗💖💜💗💖💜💖💗

I MISSED Y'ALL SO MUCH 😭 I'm back and I'm already elbows deep into writing sterek like they make me crazy with their chemistry I'm choking crying throwing up anyways this sterek brainrot never fucking ends I guess

[chevs-and-spiders]

bleeding out on the queen's cobbled floors

[roimargot]

A small comic I made abt young Arthur who sees a growing romance between Lancelot and Guinevere for the first time English is not my first language so if you see any mistakes feel free to correct me!

enjoy your meal arthuriana fandom

[marmaladedcroissant]

Drawing Darry as a medieval knight because the things in my brain keeps screaming about how angsty it would be if he was forced to follow a knight code that states if you can fight, do so, but if you're captured by the enemy, then by code of honour you have to serve them, yadda yadda yadda, and the gang ends up fighting him and he's never been happier to lose (He was taken as a POW so they have to fight him and win to get him back)

I just needed somewhere to scream abt this sorry lmao

OH YEAH AND THE CURTIS PARENTS ARE ALIVE, AND SO ARE JOHNNY AND DALLY

[turndecassette2]

I do remember those magic knight people! Every once in a while I go back on your blog to try to track down those drawings because I like them and the concept in the description so much. I would love to hear more about them. Do you have a story planned out?

yeah, vaguely. so for the cosmology; there's this dystopian city I desperately need to draw a map of built above the fossilised remains of an ancient hell. the city mines the hell for 'hell-flesh', a semi-sentient magical substance that's kind of the physical container of the souls of the damned. I suppose this is like fantasy rare earths for fantasy compute or w/e. this has been going on for a while and the city is, kiruna-style, gradually falling down the pit. also as more of the hell is laid bare, semi-autonomous demonic creatures are let loose, maybe as a kind of immune response against human incursion.

(imagining this sort of thing + branching passages. but in the middle of an italian intra-feuding city-state w a population ca modern day singapore)

a kind of grid of bridges and fortresses has been built above the pit to protect the fancier, upper parts of the city from the decaying/descending bits below. the lower city is mostly miners etc & due to the fucked up mutagenic influence of living near a hell & touching hell stuff all day the people in the upper city treat them with suspicion. there's a 'join the US navy-army-whatever to get health insurance & education & basic human dignity' or like french foreign legion situation where by joining the elite magic army manning the little fortresses, ppl from the lower city can gain some access to the upper. in the reverse I guess for the upper city ppl it functions a bit like 'the wall' in asoiaf where criminals, noble bastards etc go to maybe redeem themselves or die horribly.

the fire magic used by the guards to fight demons etc is derived from the burning corpse of a god that is said to have been there since before the founding of the city (presumably the entity responsible for the hell situation in the first place). by swearing fealty to this dead(-ish) god one gets the ability to summon his divine flame but you forfeit your chance at an afterlife, or maybe you go to hell (no-one is quite sure). everyone kind of assumes once the body is fully burned the god will return/reincarnate (and either save or destroy the city, depending on who you ask).

the politics part; at its founding the city was part of some empire that has since collapsed (pretty recently). the city is dependent on trade to stay viable/fed and to appease the new warring states/mini-empires that have sprung up around it. the current ruler is a reclusive young queen & she has her favourite lord/advisor, an ageing academic who is sort of trying to liberalise the place or make it superficially less fashy. other lords dislike this & are working to either find her a proper king or hasten the return of some deity or other that will return the place to its former glory.

I guess the story? has this noble child bastard protagonist from a shady family* of word-mages who is sent to the 'centre' fortress & works her way up to become the apprentice of some hero-knight demon slayer guy with a possibly shady past (I think rn the name I have for the guy is Chaimé & idk if this is a good name? like the spanish jaime but w more e, & the tiny bastard is Myia I think). I imagine her being the sasuke to a happier, more popular girl who saves her from a demon (embarrassing) then is outed as a half-demon herself (she's the redhead in the drawings) & Myia warms up to her as she (demon girl) becomes increasingly isolated from the outside city (being supposedly dangerous or too powerful? I don't think Myia has much natural magic or w/e in her aside from being a nerd & very persistent).

sorry there's a lot here that would be SPOILERS if I ever actually made this into something coherent enough to be an actual comic ha ha. the knight/mentor guy gets dragged into a kind of fantasy 'business plot' & I guess part of that would be like, seeing to what extent he goes along with it & if he's actually a good person ha ha. + there's a bunch of other characters w stuff going on that I haven't figured out the looks of yet but. they're important in my head. the big bear-ish bf guy who gets sent on an expedition down the pit etc

* I have a distinct image of these people living hidden away in some gormenghast-style estate. they've habsburged themselves into being mostly deaf but the only ones around who can fully read/write the divine language that lets them do word-based magic & the other houses kind of have to put up w their weirdness. also scheming nobles in dune using sign language is 1 of my favourite things in the new film adaption & I like the idea of outsiders being forced to learn to sign (or else being cut-off from higher level magic) as some sort of power move? I don't think they involve themselves that much in politics since that's below them but are def part of the 'bring the gods back' thing, for better or worse. anyway after 'avas demon' (GUILTY PLEASURE I know it has such pretty colours but comes from such an unhinged part of the internet, will never stop apologising for this) started posting again I realised it had a character w the same look & vibe so will try and re-design protag girl to look more like this cute person I saw in a fashion post on IG

... let's see how this goes. came up w all this BS after some viz lady at comicon asked me if I wanted to make them a manga but it's grown from being too little to being too unwieldy to pitch. will see after I finish up my current projects. how much blood, swearing & genocide can a story have before it stops being YA. I think chainsaw man is sort of YA but dorohedoro isn't

[opencommunion]

Adoration of the Shepherds, from a 1262 Gospel manuscript created by Toros Roslin, one of the most celebrated illuminators in Armenian history

[escespace]

Let's talk, let's be friends:

Aithusa is, in my opinion, the strangest plot hole of all plot holes (and there are too many of those). So, considering the - no prophesied but- foretold by the Great Dragon about the white dragon that would help Merlin and Arthur fulfill their destiny... Adding that to the fact that we spent our time looking for ways to justify the prophecy of the golden age and the return of magic when we never saw any of that on screen (literally the golden age was the friends made along the way)... The question is:

After all, there's no way he didn't know what would happen to Aithusa if he neglected her (he know a little too much). BECAUSE MERLIN ENTRUSTED HER TO HIM. She is the last of his much-missed species, after saying so much that he regretted being the last, it doesn't make sense that he lost her by accident

Tell me the reason for your answer (let's keep the fandom alive WE ARE TRENDING TODAY 🥳)

[icethinggigachad]

"Hadron" originates in particle physics, as a term it was introduced in 1962. If he were born in 1962, he wouldve been way too young to be in college with Ford in the 1970s.

Therefore: there is no way that Fiddleford's could have given him that name originally.

This opens a few possibilities:

1. Fiddleford's parents gave him that middle name retroactively for some reason. Like they read about the latest in particle physics somehow, looked at their nine or ten year old son, then decided "this is your middle name now!"

2. Fiddleford is trans, and chose it himself. Deciding to name himself after physics stuff like a giant nerd.

3. Fiddleford is not trans, but for some reason decided to give himself a nerdy middle name anyway. Just because.

[bedtimegiraffe]

I am so stuck on what PB is trying to tell me with these outfits.

(Character sizes adjusted for head canon height reasons)

Why is Baldur the odd one out? Given that King Arlan and Baldur are close, while Aerin is barely there and very much considered less important by both of them, why are King Arlan and Aerin dressed in the same color? Doesn't it look like Arlan and Aerin are the two who go together (not to mention the similar names)?

(On a practical note, Aerin is a fully unique character model as far as I can tell. King Arlan has the same face as an awful cop character (which was, in retrospect, a sign), but his outfit is definitely new. I think Baldur's base body is a repeat (?) but the rest is new. Basically, they could have done whatever they wanted with these outfit!)

Is Aerin trying to fit in and telegraph that he aligns with their father and Baldur just wears whatever because he doesn't care?

Are the character designers trying to show that King Arlan and Aerin actually have more in common? They're definitely the smart ones who are good at pretending to be harmless (the 'Gentle King' who would totally execute his son and Mr. "I know you'll accomplish anything you set out to do" while actively working against your goal over here).

I don't know why they're designed like this! I want to understand!

[busiest-bee]

I hate it when I’m abt to re-consume a piece of media I enjoy and I can just FEEL my brain getting ready for me to think abt it for most of my time for the next few days

[litcest]

Incest and the Medieval Imagination, by Elizabeth Archibald: Chapter 3: Mothers and Sons: Deliberate Incest

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 Part 1 | Chapter 3 Part 2 | Chapter 4 Part 1 | Chapter 4 Part 2 | Chapter 4 Part 3 | Chapter 5 Part 1 | Chapter 5 Part 2 | Conclusion

The stories discussed before were cases in which the incest (or almost incest) was an accident, as the mother and son weren't aware of each other's identity when the proposal or marriage happened. These stories of mother-son incest often center on the son's journey of repentance and spiritual growth. The mother, while a key figure in the initial sin, is typically relegated to a secondary role. She lacks the opportunity for significant redemption or character development. In contrast, the son often ascends to a position of power, allowing him to judge, forgive or punish his mother. This dynamic underscores his moral superiority and her role as a source of temptation.

While these Oedipus' narratives prioritize the son's perspective, there are shorter stories and exempla that shift the focus to the mother, exploring her agency and motivations in committing incest. This set of stories deals with cases in which one or both parties are aware of the nature of their relationship and make a conscious decision to go forwards with the affair.

Mother in exempla: Deliberate Incest

In Index Exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Tales, Frederic C. Tubach compiles many Medieval exempla with deal with mother and son incest, using as a source diverse Medieval texts such as Vitae Patrum, Dialogues and Legenda aurea. The majority of the incest-related short tales compiled by Tubach differ from the ones discussed before, focussing much more on the evil and immorality of woman. Not only these stories paint the women as promiscuous and reluctant to confess, but they also don't even bother naming the characters. What matter most is the intrinsic sinfulness of the female, not who she is. Usually, there's little agency placed on the son, he simply gives into the temptation when the mother offers the opportunity for the intercourse, there's no great passion of his part, but neither is he described as being raped.

Some exemples are one in which a mother falsely accuses her son of incest because he has rejected her advances, and is subsequently struck dead by a thunderbolt (very reminiscent of Phaedra and Hippolytus); a mother is denounced for incest with her son and infanticide, but is saved by the Virgin’s intercession; a mother dies of fright when she realizes that she is about to commit incest with her son, who has come home incognito to test her and see if women really are insatiably lustful (perhaps a version of the story of Secundus the silent).

The Gesta Romanorum also includes a story of this type, under the title of De Amore Inordinato ('About Inappropriate Love'): a woman is so attached to her son that she shares her bed with him until he's eighteen. Then, the devil tempts the son to have sex with his mother and when they do, the mother becomes pregnant. The son leaves and the mother kills the new-born, but the baby's blood stain permanently her hand, so that she has to wear gloves to hide her crime. At first, the woman doesn't want to confess, but eventually the Virgin gets through to her and the woman confesses, dying shortly after. The moral explanation accompanying the text explains the the incestuous act is a reflection of the consumption of the Forbidden Fruit and the blood stains are the same that Adam got when he fell from Eden.

While the filicide might seem very shocking, it's a common ending to babies born of witting incestuous liaisons, as it furthers showcases the evilness of the mother and that lust leads to violence. However, these exempla also show that despite the spiritual weakness of women, they still can be saved, even if a forceful intervention is needed. The Virgin's intervention is also a frequent motif for these exempla, which is rather fitting considering that she's the Mother of Christ, but also the Bride of God, and since God and Jesus are one, she is spiritually both mother and wife.

Another variant, called Dit du Buef by French author Jean de Saint-Quentin, makes the penitence more complex than simply confessing the sins. In this version, a widow has an affair with her son, who resembles his dead father, and eventually gets pregnant. The son leaves for Rome, seeking absolution from the Pope, and the mother gives birth to a baby girl. The devil tries to convince the mother to kill the girl, but the Virgen intervenes and the daughter is spared. When the daughter is twelve, once again the Virgin helps, advising the girl to ask her mother about her father. The mother confesses the incest to the daughter and they go to a priest to tells her to go to Rome. In Rome, they meet the son/father/brother, who had found a job working for the Pope. The Pope then announces that the three of them are to have cowhides sewn around their bodies and wander like that for seven years. The trio does as ordered, and when the seven year mark comes to a end, they pray to God to be taken to heaven and a angels comes to fetch them, informing the Pope about it. The Pope them constructs a monastery where the family had died, and it becomes a spot known for miraculous cures.

A big difference is that in this story, the product of the incestuous affair is a daughter, not a son. Interestingly, in some Renaissance stories that are similar to Dit du Buef, the father/brother almost marries his daughter/sister when she arrives in Rome. As for the cowhide, they may function as a deterrent for sexual activity, or to showcase the animalistic low that the woman and her son sunk into when they engaged in incestuous intercourse.

Regarding those Renaissance variants, the basic plot is the following: a maid tells her mistress that the mistress' son is trying to proposition her. To ascertain those claims, the mistress hides herself in the maid's room and indeed, the son does visit in the night. Overcome with lust, the mistress pretends to be the maid and give into her son's advances. From this single encounter, she gets pregnant, and to hide this, she sends away the maid, her son and the new-born daughter. The daughter is raised in another household and eventually meets her father/brother and they fall in love, when the mother finds out, she's horrified, but the couple remain ignorant of the relationship.

One account of this variant appears in the second part of Bandello’s Novelle, published in 1554. Another is told by Martin Luther in his commentary on Genesis, written sometime between 1535 and 1545, in which alleging that the story happened in Erfurt and the confession was heard by one of his colleagues. The story is also featured in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron from 1558.

One major difference that can be observed in relation to previous tales of double incest is that, here, the second couple remains married and in ignorance. As seen in Chapter 1, it was practice to let incestuous couples stay married when their kinship had been unknown to them. Another detail is that the child of the incestuous encounter isn't depicted as evil or in need of redemption. This reflects a change of how sin was being perceived during and after the Reformation: one cannot sin without intend and, most importantly, the sins of the parents don't carry over to the child.

As a final note, it's important to highlight that, from the stories samples, there doesn't seem to be any in which the son knowingly seduces the mother (one could perhaps consider Secundus an exception, but then again, in that story the incest isn't consummated nor had Secundus intended to, he was merely testing his mother). The incest is either unknown to the characters or it's the mother who make advances towards the son, who while sometimes goes along with it, comes to regret and repent for the act before the mother.