For your browsing pleasure, here are links to a bunch of medieval images of scribes and scribal tools

You’ll notice that in almost all the images, the scribe is holding a quill pen in one hand, and a knife in the other. The knife had multiple functions – you can tell from the pictures that they used it to hold the parchment down. They also used the knife as an eraser – if a scribe made a mistake, he could scrape the ink off the parchment before it had time to sink in permanently.

The scribes almost always sit at nice slanted drafting tables. I wish I had one that nice! The image above is from an early 14th century manuscript in the British Library (originally found here ). I like the scribe’s middle-school-style wraparound desk, and the stand he has to hold up the book he is copying from.

I love my cats dearly. Dearly enough that I let them stomp all over my desk. When Adeen (the one on the right in the picture) walks on my desk, it’s usually not too much of a problem – she’s pretty graceful and controlled, and really the only thing she attacks is my printer when it’s printing.

Bainne (the one on the left), on the other hand, is just about the clumsiest creature on earth. Just getting on my desk requires clawing her way up my chair, and it’s not uncommon for her to fall to the floor when trying to get from chair to desk. Then she paces back and forth all over my desk, head-bonking anything three-dimensional (yes, that includes ink bottles). I do calligraphy on a small light board, so the edge of the paper often hangs off, and Bainne often tries to step on the overhanging paper edge, which of course results in bent paper and unsellable calligraphy. She’s also a master at getting cat hairs in my pen nibs.

So as much as I love my dear monsters, I do have to convince them not to get on my desk while I’m trying to do calligraphy. Or sometimes it’s just easier to stop, close all the ink bottles, put all the nice paper out of kitty reach, and wait until they’re asleep to try again.

I finished writing the first chapter of my dissertation today!

Well, okay, to be honest, I finished putting together an extraordinarily rough draft full of notes to myself like “Add more here!” and “Find a source for this!” It’s so rough at this point that I don’t think I’ll subject my mentor to the painful experience of reading it.

But the important part is, I have a chapter, and it’s sortof written, and will need to be revised all through the process of writing the rest of the dissertation anyway.

It’s just an introductory chapter, so all it really does is explain what other historians have written about medieval prophecy and Welsh prophecy in particular, and talk a little about the challenges of doing Welsh history and the approach I’m going to take in the rest of the dissertation. Nothing terribly exciting yet.

But I’m excited to have it drafted! Maybe I’ll have time to do some calligraphy this week!

Here is a really amazing example of a meeting of medieval and modern calligraphy: Donald Jackson, a modern Welsh calligrapher, is undertaking a project to create an entire hand-written Bible. It is written in amazing modern calligraphy, with illustrations by Jackson and many other artists, but there is no doubting the medieval heritage of this Bible – you can see it in the page layouts and in the use of illuminated letters.

I really admire this project – it is clearly a labor of love, and a fascinating culmination of 2000 years of Bible history. I can’t imagine taking on such a huge project! It is scheduled to be completed in 2009.

Here are links to several pages full of information and images about the St. John’s Bible:

• The St. John’s Bible Homepage
• Wikipedia Article
• Exhibit at the Library of Congress

[By the way, I can’t help but mention – if you see any claims that this is the first hand-written Bible since Gutenberg invented the printing press, that claim is downright false. People didn’t stop writing books by hand the instant the printing press was invented! Sorry for the rant, but that’s one of my big soapboxes.]

The earliest written form of the word “Christmas” is found throughout an Anglo-Saxon Chronicle manuscript dated to approximately 1123. For example:

an 1101 Her on {th}isum {asg}eare to X{ptilde}es. mæssan heold se cyng Heanri{asg} his hired on Westmynstre.
[year 1101 In this year at Christ’s mass King Henry held his court in Westsminster]

The illustration is a “detail and initial ‘B’ from a page from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in Anglo-Saxon. Made in Peterborough Abbey (12th century, c. 1121). MS. Laud Misc. 636, fol. 1r. © Bodleian Library, Oxford.”

Thanks to Gail of Scribal Terror for pointing this out!