As much as you could enjoy a night with a book, you might not seem so impatient of this if this book included 314 folios of 1,971 papal letters and other documents relating to ecclesiastical law, all from the 13th century. Indeed, even many field specialists would hesitate to take up the challenge of such a manuscript in their entirety. But what happens if we told you that it is accompanied by illustrations of demons flowing, Knights fighting against snails,, killer rabbits and other animals that take revenge on humanity, A dead ringtone for YodaAnd the Thäis penitent hasis?
These are just some of the characters that adorn the pages of Smithfield Decreesthe most visually notable of all existing copies of Decree of Pope Gregory IX. When it was initially published as a manuscript already informed in the 1230s, writes Spencer McDaniel to Tales of times forgotten“The margins of the text were deliberately left empty by the original French scribes so that the future owners of the text can add their own notes and annotations.” Thus, “the manuscript would originally have known a lot of empty space, especially in the margins.”
“At one point before about 1340, however, the Smithfield Decrees fell into possession of someone in eastern England, probably in London, who paid a group of illustrators to add even more extensive illustrations to the text. »»
They “attracted borders and illustrations developed on each page of the manuscript, almost completely fulfilling all the margins”, adhering to the “contemporary trend among the illustrators handwritten in the east of England to draw” funny “, which are bizarre, absurd and humorous marginal illustrations.”
Bearing no direct relationship with the text of the DecreeSome of these elaborate works by MARGINALIA of the 14th century seem to tell their own stories. “These tales have analogues in a vertiginous variety of textual and visual sources, notably the Bible, Hagiography, Romance, the Exempla and Fabliau preachers” (a humorous and risky form of early French poetry), Writes Alixe Bovey on the British Library medieval manuscript blog. “Some stories have no surviving literary analogues; Others constitute visual interpretations isolated from formerly popular tales. ”
If you visualize the illustrations of Smithfield's deceptions here or in The digitization of the British library on internet archivesYou will also see the medieval satirical impulse at work. Take the aforementioned “Yoda”, which, like McDaniel, “is probably supposed to be a representation of the devil as a teacher of canon law”. It seems that “legal researchers in the Middle Ages had a reputation similar to lawyers today; They were considered viscous, dishonest and more interested in personal gain than by justice. ” They might have been good for a cryptic turn, but those who need benevolent wisdom would have done better to ask elsewhere.
Related content:
Why the knights fought snails in illuminated medieval manuscripts
Why the trumpets and other bizarre images appeared in illuminated medieval manuscripts
Make your own medieval memes with a new tool from the Dutch National Library
Based in Seoul, Colin MArshall Written and broadcastTS on cities, language and culture. His projects include the substack newsletter Books on cities And the book The stateless city: a walk through Los Angeles from the 21st century. Follow it on the social network formerly known as Twitter in @ColinmArshall.
