Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's the Bobby Penn hiding in your hair overnight,
Speaker 1: Ali Ward, this episode is coming out in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night, sometime between April first and second. Friends.
Speaker 1: It's not a prank, it's real. It's really a whole
Speaker 1: episode about medieval manuscript art with a focus on drawings
Speaker 1: of snails. This is why I make this show. This
Speaker 1: is why this was my dream job forever. I love
Speaker 1: this and you will too as we cover what these golden,
Speaker 1: illuminated Middle Ages manuscripts were made of and so much
Speaker 1: more with this expert who did their undergrad at the
Speaker 1: University of Winchester in Medieval and Renaissance studies, a master
Speaker 1: also in Medieval and Renaissance studies and is working toward
Speaker 1: a PhD. Now you may be familiar with their work.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of thousands of art history hungry people follow them
Speaker 1: online and they educate the public about historical texts and
Speaker 1: arts and sistery which are medieval snail themes. Their bio
Speaker 1: simply explains medieval snail historian, that's what my thesis was on.
Speaker 1: And they seem to go viral whenever they mention Vincent
Speaker 1: Vanco's work.
Speaker 2: Vincent voholks voholch himself.
Speaker 1: Okay, the hitches, they're Dutch, they speak Dutch. This is
Speaker 1: how Vincent van g A Dutch said his name in Dutch,
Speaker 1: and how everyone who speaks his native tongue of Dutch
Speaker 1: says it. So they know what they are talking about
Speaker 1: and they love doing it. So when many of you
Speaker 1: asked me to get to the bottom of medieval gastropods,
Speaker 1: I moved swiftly. Here we are. I promise you there
Speaker 1: are many, many, many things relevant to your life and
Speaker 1: the world around us in this episode. You will never
Speaker 1: look at old manuscripts, snails, or even the news the
Speaker 1: same way. Have faith. Now on that note, thank you
Speaker 1: to everyone who leaves reviews for this show on your
Speaker 1: podcast apps, which I read. I harvest a fresh one
Speaker 1: each week, such as this one from Tim M six
Speaker 1: point fifty one, who wrote, truly the best science podcast
Speaker 1: out there. Even when I find myself not interested in
Speaker 1: a topic, she makes it palatable. The worst thing about
Speaker 1: it is the show note. You thought you were done, well,
Speaker 1: here's five more episodes you might like. Seriously give it
Speaker 1: a listen, and yeah, check the show notes because we
Speaker 1: always link a bunch of episodes that you're gonna like. Okay, Tim,
Speaker 1: thank you. Thank you also for wearing your Ologies merch,
Speaker 1: which you can get at ologiesmarch dot com. We keep
Speaker 1: it affordable so that Ologites can find each other in
Speaker 1: the wild. Also, thank you a patrons at patroon dot
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Speaker 1: in your questions. You can join if you like, for
Speaker 1: as little as one hot dollar a month. Also, if
Speaker 1: our regular episodes are too sexy and cool for you
Speaker 1: and you need some without swearing, we make a whole
Speaker 1: spinoff show called Smologies. You can find it in the
Speaker 1: show notes or wherever you get podcasts, just search for Smologies.
Speaker 1: They are shorter, classroom saved versions of our episodes for
Speaker 1: the kiddos. Okay, let's get to it. So, codocology is
Speaker 1: the study of old, old books, and in this case
Speaker 1: we're looking at the Middle Ages and the drawings that
Speaker 1: crept up the margins and at the foot of the
Speaker 1: pages and between the letters of rare books, also creeping
Speaker 1: among the imagery. Tons of snails. Why, let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: Who drew them? Why were people sometimes naked in them?
Speaker 1: Why did animals have creepy human faces, What art trends
Speaker 1: came and went? And what does it say about our
Speaker 1: history and future? What happened if you messed up making
Speaker 1: a manuscript? What exactly is a Salisbury steak with scholar
Speaker 1: globally known art history communicator, Snithstorian and medieval cotocologist Evan Pritmore.
Speaker 2: Evan Pridmore and my pronouns? Are they them?
Speaker 1: And where you're in some sort of library with leather
Speaker 1: bound books.
Speaker 2: So this isn't actually it's not technically a library, but
Speaker 2: it's a set that we use for when we're doing
Speaker 2: videos and podcasting and things like that. The issue that
Speaker 2: I have is that these are all very old, rare
Speaker 2: historical books, so sometimes they get bought, which means that
Speaker 2: we have to frantically search through them and then find
Speaker 2: something else to fill the set instead. So we handle
Speaker 2: rare historical or otherwise significant books in general, which of
Speaker 2: course is where my study and piliography comes into play.
Speaker 1: Paleography means old writing, which is cool.
Speaker 2: So some of the things we've recently handled last year
Speaker 2: was the first folio, Shakespeare's firstfolio, so very early seventeenth century,
Speaker 2: several million pounds what yeah, things like that which are
Speaker 2: literal pieces of history you can hold in your hand.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Did you have to go through any history if Shakespeare
Speaker 1: was real? Or was five people or anything like that?
Speaker 2: Shakespeare was real? I can say that just based on
Speaker 2: the current academic A research Shakespeare was real, and our
Speaker 2: official state answers that, yes, Shakespeare was a real person.
Speaker 2: We're not buying into the conspiracy theories. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: That's wonderful. I'm glad we cleared that up right off
Speaker 1: the bat, because that's the thing I forgot that I
Speaker 1: was wondering. And so books and rare books.
Speaker 2: M hm.
Speaker 1: So you came into my field division about literature's medieval snails.
Speaker 1: I need to know how your work steered in that direction.
Speaker 1: When did you start to notice snails or did somebody
Speaker 1: else notice snails? And you were like, you're right, does
Speaker 1: everyone know about snails in medieval literature? Or is this
Speaker 1: something that going through old books you started to see them?
Speaker 2: Well, So I always grew up being quite a fan
Speaker 2: of history. I mean, especially British audiences, which is where
Speaker 2: I'm based. They'll know things like Horrible Histories, which is
Speaker 2: a book and TV series. Are you Protestant?
Speaker 1: Are you vaguely related to Henry the Eighth.
Speaker 2: Is your name, Lady Jane Gray, Then you want to
Speaker 2: star prize and you're going to experience what it's like
Speaker 2: to be queen for nine days and really caught my attention.
Speaker 2: Made me sort of obsessed with history, frankly to a
Speaker 2: concerning degree, and I think I started to veer towards
Speaker 2: the early Modern and Medieval period just because those seemed
Speaker 2: to be times that there was a lot of confusion
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of differing opinions and takes and
Speaker 2: research into it. And in the Medieval period, especially because
Speaker 2: a lot of our view of the Middle Ages is
Speaker 2: warped by victorians. So things like the iron maiden or
Speaker 2: other torture devices, a lot of them were invented later
Speaker 2: because the Victorians wanted to essentially show that they were
Speaker 2: more civilized than these medieval barbarians.
Speaker 1: I was like, what is this all about? And yeah,
Speaker 1: the Dark Ages got a bad rap from victorians, and
Speaker 1: they said all kinds of things about how brutal and
Speaker 1: uncivilized people were back then, and even though some of
Speaker 1: the torture devices they said they used were not in
Speaker 1: fact a thing back then. But let's just clear up
Speaker 1: the timeline a little bit because it is kind of
Speaker 1: dark and murky, so classical antiquity, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece.
Speaker 1: We do have a whole episode about ancient Rome as
Speaker 1: well as a few Egyptology episodes will link in the
Speaker 1: show notes. But yeah, classical antiquity spans from the eighth
Speaker 1: century BC to the fifth century AD and the Roman
Speaker 1: Empire specifically, it started right before Christ and it lasted
Speaker 1: about five hundred years. And then we have the Middle
Speaker 1: Ages and the Dark Ages that's the early part of
Speaker 1: those Middle Ages, from right after Rome fell to about
Speaker 1: one thousand. Now, these whole Middle Ages from five hundred
Speaker 1: to fifteen hundred that was also called the Medieval Period.
Speaker 1: And after that, around fifteen hundred on, we have the
Speaker 1: start of the Modern Era with the capture and fall
Speaker 1: of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire, the spread of the
Speaker 1: printing press, Columbus ambling west and getting lost but changing
Speaker 1: the world history of colonization, and now we have phones
Speaker 1: where we look at video of strangers getting their earwax cleaned.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the Dark Ages is the kind of out
Speaker 1: of date term for the early Middle Ages.
Speaker 2: So because of that, I was like, okay, well, what
Speaker 2: is the truth about the Middle Ages? Are they really
Speaker 2: this insane and bonkers? There was chial by cake where
Speaker 2: it was if you were able to eat the cake
Speaker 2: without choking, you'd be fined innocent. If you choked while
Speaker 2: eating the cake, you would be found guilty.
Speaker 1: Oh no, what kind of cake was it?
Speaker 2: I honestly don't know. I'm gonna imagine some sort of
Speaker 2: like fruitcake or mince pie or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: I needed to know it really quick. You needed to know.
Speaker 1: And this was apparently called coarse ned or the accursed
Speaker 1: or sacred morsel, And sadly it was not a medieval
Speaker 1: apple fritter, but apparently it was unleavened barley bread with
Speaker 1: sheep milk, made in the month of May. Very specific.
Speaker 1: It was also called elfitomancy, and it involved barley cake
Speaker 1: sometimes or slices of barley bread. And yeah, if you
Speaker 1: choked on that, you were toast. Keep in mind, if
Speaker 1: you had a bunch of holy figures watching you eat
Speaker 1: a piece of dry bread to determine if you lived
Speaker 1: or died, you would probably have sweaty palms and cot math,
Speaker 1: meaning that you would probably choke. But I don't even think.
Speaker 1: They're just a system allowed for an appeal in the
Speaker 1: form of dessert. And yeah, it happened more than once,
Speaker 1: but I guess you got a free snack out of it.
Speaker 2: A bit early for me, a bit out of my specialty.
Speaker 2: But it's those sort of weird things that I just
Speaker 2: became obsessed with. And then one day I saw the art,
Speaker 2: which is weird. I think a lot of people have
Speaker 2: seen this whole thing about medieval memes or like weird
Speaker 2: medieval art online. I'm sure you've seen them as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I love them. Yeah, everyone loves them. They're great.
Speaker 2: And I was like, Okay, surely that can't be all
Speaker 2: of it, because we see how people were drawing in
Speaker 2: the Renaissance, and we see how people are drawing in
Speaker 2: the Classical era, and so there's this whole idea of
Speaker 2: in Europe the Dark Ages, which is a term I hate.
Speaker 2: But this whole thing of the Dark Ages is why
Speaker 2: did it suddenly go downhill and then go back up?
Speaker 2: And the truth is that it didn't. It was just
Speaker 2: a very different style. So one of my pet peeves
Speaker 2: is when people say, oh, they didn't know how to draw,
Speaker 2: I'm like, yes, they did. They just drew in a
Speaker 2: very different way to what we would understand.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that was it completely stylistically or
Speaker 1: was it just once your brain sees something a certain way,
Speaker 1: then it interprets everything that it sees that way.
Speaker 2: I think I was a little bit of both. I mean,
Speaker 2: it also depends on where you are, because I'm looking
Speaker 2: predominantly at European sources, and even in Europe, the sources
Speaker 2: are quite varied. If you look at early medieval artwork
Speaker 2: versus late medieval artwork in Italy, it varies a lot,
Speaker 2: especially the amount of gold that they use. Italy got
Speaker 2: richer they started to just add gold too.
Speaker 1: Everything Is it real gold? Is it real gold? Lead?
Speaker 2: Gold leaf? Yeah, a lot of it. And you still
Speaker 2: find many manuscripts today that still have gold leaf everywhere
Speaker 2: in them, and it's quite frankly, very tempting to steal them.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I can't imagine how much money going
Speaker 1: back to that style of art, because we've seen medieval
Speaker 1: memes where it's like someone's holding someone's head and the
Speaker 1: head's dripping blood, and then someone the person holding the
Speaker 1: head also has a boner maybe, and like there's a
Speaker 1: dog lapping something up in the corner. Just people seem
Speaker 1: like weird little cartoon figures. Everyone looks kind of like
Speaker 1: mister Burns from the Simpsons, Like, where where is that
Speaker 1: style coming from?
Speaker 2: Ooh Okay, now you're getting into the real debate, because
Speaker 2: there's a couple different perspectives of where it comes from.
Speaker 2: Because the thing is is that there are several different
Speaker 2: types of manuscripture have things like books of ours, We've
Speaker 2: got psalters, We've got things like anatomical or pharmaceutical texts,
Speaker 2: and we also have things like carvings or stone reliefs
Speaker 2: that would happen on churches or other buildings like that,
Speaker 2: and the artwork varies between all of them. Now, around
Speaker 2: the ninth century, the artwork started to sort of look similar,
Speaker 2: at least in terms of drawing. In sculpture, it actually
Speaker 2: still looked a lot more realistic, with the exception of
Speaker 2: like grotesques.
Speaker 1: Just a side note, a grotesque it's often mistaken for
Speaker 1: a gargoyle, but I guess a gargoyle has to have
Speaker 1: water spouting out of it. But in general, a grotesque
Speaker 1: is kind of a goofy, creepy monster sculpture. On the
Speaker 1: side of buildings, sometimes churches because it added a little
Speaker 1: funny pizazz. But yeah, even those didn't look as weird
Speaker 1: as the manuscript drawings that Evan studies.
Speaker 2: Those were still very much a thing. But if you
Speaker 2: look at sculpture on a medieval cathedral, for example, those
Speaker 2: people look a lot more realistic than the people do
Speaker 2: in manuscripts.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The thing about the manuscripts is that these artworks, unless
Speaker 2: it was like a full illumination on a page that
Speaker 2: was meant to tie in with the text, is a
Speaker 2: lot of these were either marginal or just decorative, so
Speaker 2: there wasn't as much necessity for realism. Basically, you could
Speaker 2: be symbolic, you could be basically, you could have fun
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 1: You want to get weird, let's get weird. And when
Speaker 1: you're talking about manuscripts, does that mean a manuscript is
Speaker 1: always handwritten? Does the nomenclature change as technology does, and
Speaker 1: what kind of technology did they have in the medieval times?
Speaker 2: So manuscript phonetically you break it down into manuscript, it
Speaker 2: does mean handwritten. So in the rare book trade we
Speaker 2: still have things that are called manuscripts, but these would
Speaker 2: be things like a handwritten draft for a James Bond
Speaker 2: novel or something along those lines. Like a manuscript letter
Speaker 2: would be a handwritten letter as opposed to a typed letter.
Speaker 2: It literally just means handwritten. So when we say that
Speaker 2: in terms of medieval books, when I say a medieval manuscript,
Speaker 2: pretty much everything in the Middle Ages was a manuscript
Speaker 2: because the printing press, which already existed in China and
Speaker 2: Eastern Asia, did not exist in Europe at that time.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until the late fifteenth century with the Gutenberg
Speaker 2: Press that it really became a thing. And by that time,
Speaker 2: the Renaissance in early Modern period were already kicking off.
Speaker 2: So if we're looking solely at the Middle Ages, they
Speaker 2: didn't have any technology other than handwriting. There were some
Speaker 2: things like woodcuts that you could do, but they didn't
Speaker 2: have a press to do it, so it'd have to
Speaker 2: be manually done each time, which is a very long
Speaker 2: process and part of why incredibly detailed manuscripts. Some would
Speaker 2: be written by one person and then illustrated by another,
Speaker 2: so it would kind of be like almost a production
Speaker 2: line of who.
Speaker 1: Was doing what and who was doing this? Was it
Speaker 1: all monks?
Speaker 2: Well, I'd like to just add for the record, that
Speaker 2: it was a lot of nuns as well, was it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they often get forgotten. So I'd just like to give
Speaker 2: a huge shout out to my medieval ladies. Jeffrey Hamburger
Speaker 2: wrote a which, first of all, a great name, wrote
Speaker 2: an incredible book that's on nuns in medieval art and
Speaker 2: nuns as artists. It's a really good read, and it
Speaker 2: kind of was mostly them. There were scribes, there were
Speaker 2: schools that did this, but honestly, it was the main
Speaker 2: source of outcome for a monastery or a convent. Many
Speaker 2: of the people who went into monasteries and convents would
Speaker 2: be people like either third or fourth sons of lesser nobility,
Speaker 2: or like certain merchant's children, and so they would already
Speaker 2: have somewhat of a background in painting and reading because
Speaker 2: it was expected of like these children to learn that
Speaker 2: growing up, which meant that they could then of course
Speaker 2: teach classes to other people, including the lower classes coming in.
Speaker 2: And basically, yeah, they had the resources, they had the time,
Speaker 2: and they had the funding to do it. So for
Speaker 2: the most part, yes, there were other workshops and places
Speaker 2: doing it, but the majority of things that we know
Speaker 2: were either written by people of the monastic life or
Speaker 2: people who were in some way connected with religion, and.
Speaker 1: Then did that fund the monastery as well? Did they
Speaker 1: get kind of commissions and then that all went into
Speaker 1: the pot.
Speaker 2: Yes, definitely. And we have a few cases of certain
Speaker 2: monks who actually became so famous that they were able
Speaker 2: to have their own workshop and places like that. So
Speaker 2: there's one. So Matthew Paris, for example, Matthew Paris was
Speaker 2: a Benedictine monk who became so well known that he
Speaker 2: actually was able to write all his own stuff and
Speaker 2: we know that it's assigned to him. Now, whether that
Speaker 2: was him or whether it was a studio, that's a question.
Speaker 2: But essentially, yeah, these were just workshops. A bunch of
Speaker 2: men was tauntures.
Speaker 1: No idea what a tonsure was, So I'm here to
Speaker 1: tell you it's when clergy or monks shave a huge,
Speaker 1: unsexy bald spot and they just rock the bangs in
Speaker 1: a mullet and then go commando at the top of
Speaker 1: the head. Also a couple more things fashion wise fun
Speaker 1: at the monastery. Hair shirts woven from coarse goat bristles
Speaker 1: that sometimes featured scraps of metal or twigs. Those were
Speaker 1: worn on the skin solely for the purpose of bad
Speaker 1: sensory vibes to remind you to be good. And there
Speaker 1: were other forms of scillus used to repent via the
Speaker 1: pain and mortification of the flesh, like rose thorn garters
Speaker 1: or metal spiked ones you could tighten kind of like
Speaker 1: a prong collar for dogs. But it's you and you're
Speaker 1: doing it for God. Can you still get this stuff? Sure?
Speaker 1: I found such items, as well as religious whips to
Speaker 1: hurt yourself on a devotional website for the low price
Speaker 1: of sixty nine dollars ninety nine cents. You can also
Speaker 1: find these things on Etsy. From what I gather, they're
Speaker 1: used in all kinds of recreation. You certainly don't need
Speaker 1: to live in a convent or a monastery to enjoy them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, back to the dominant monk who was hot
Speaker 1: shit in his illuminated or illustrated manuscript studio. Like in
Speaker 1: his case, was he doing the lettering and the drawing
Speaker 1: or just the drawing or just the lettering.
Speaker 2: So in his case, he was, as far as we
Speaker 2: can tell, doing both, or at the very least designing both.
Speaker 2: So the thing about manuscripts that's different from modern books
Speaker 2: is that most times there would only be one true
Speaker 2: copy of a manuscript because you'd have to rewrite it,
Speaker 2: a rewrite it, rewrite it, rewrite it, and it just
Speaker 2: takes a long time. Frankly, I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: ever tried completing an entire foot sized book. It takes forever,
Speaker 2: takes a minute, it does, and also illustrate it and
Speaker 2: then do it completely identically in another one and another one.
Speaker 2: It's not possible. So we know that he definitely designed
Speaker 2: and the words are his. But how much was him
Speaker 2: versus underlings or other studio members. That is something that
Speaker 2: is still up for debate.
Speaker 1: So he may have had a literal hand making and designing,
Speaker 1: but then people trained under him completed it.
Speaker 2: Technically speaking, we say it's him because it comes from
Speaker 2: his studio in the same way that we would say
Speaker 2: a painting is by Raphael, even if some of his
Speaker 2: studio assistants worked on the painting as well.
Speaker 1: Is he kind of like stan Lee a little bit?
Speaker 1: Like a like a comment? Very much?
Speaker 2: So, yeah, Yeah, there's an incredible work that actually was
Speaker 2: recently digitized at Trinity College, Dublin, which is where I
Speaker 2: did one of my masters, And it's if you are
Speaker 2: ever born. You need to look up the Life of
Speaker 2: Saint Alban by Matthew Paris. There's an incredible piece where
Speaker 2: when Sinn Alban spoiler alert gets executed, the man who's
Speaker 2: executing him in the legend, his eyes fall out, and
Speaker 2: so there's an incredible piece of artwork where it's just
Speaker 2: this guy whose eyes are just falling out of his
Speaker 2: hand and he's like, what do I do? No? And
Speaker 2: it they kind of do read like comic books in
Speaker 2: a way. Yeah, so comical.
Speaker 1: What medieval memes are some of your favorites? Obviously cupping
Speaker 1: your own eyeballs in each palm?
Speaker 2: Yeah, classic?
Speaker 1: Solid. What are some that are going around right now
Speaker 1: that you really enjoy getting some light of day?
Speaker 2: Ooh okay, So I'm actually gonna preface this by saying
Speaker 2: I have somewhat of a pet peeve against the term
Speaker 2: medieval meme because it sort of trivializes what medieval motifs were.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, in this digital age, I
Speaker 2: think it's very important to be able to translate things
Speaker 2: into a way that modern audiences or people who are
Speaker 2: less knowledgeable will be able to understand. So it's more
Speaker 2: of a personal academic thing but I do understand calling
Speaker 2: them medieval memes, and I'm guilty of calling them that myself.
Speaker 2: I would say nuns harvesting dicks off of trees always
Speaker 2: a good one.
Speaker 1: What story was that telling?
Speaker 2: It has to do. It's basically a symbol of fertility,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker 1: Take for example, the fourteenth century illustrations for a medieval
Speaker 1: love handbook called a Romance of the Rose, which features
Speaker 1: a nun in a brown robe and a veil reaching
Speaker 1: upwards toward a branch to pluck a hefty dog from
Speaker 1: among the leaves, and she's carrying a basket. It's also
Speaker 1: filled with dogs, and it reminds me of like the
Speaker 1: opening credits of some celebrity cooking show, just our star
Speaker 1: walking through a sun drenched orchard harvesting goodies, only it's
Speaker 1: a nun and their dicks. And this wasn't just in
Speaker 1: the Romance of the Rose. There was an absolute bumper
Speaker 1: crop of this imagery at the time.
Speaker 2: There's an incredible calendar that you can get, like a
Speaker 2: wall calendar that just has different medieval penis trees for
Speaker 2: every month, and frankly I need that in wallpaper.
Speaker 1: Forget your books in the background.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, that's where it's at.
Speaker 1: We got a better any what is the other ones going?
Speaker 1: Your own?
Speaker 2: So one of my favorites this always comes up is
Speaker 2: medieval artists didn't know how to draw animals, and to
Speaker 2: be fair, a lot of the animals do look completely silly.
Speaker 2: Medieval dogs, medieval cats. My favorite one is a medieval
Speaker 2: oyster because it just looks like it has like a
Speaker 2: frownie face, which I didn't even think oysters had faces.
Speaker 2: But you know, interpretation, creative license.
Speaker 1: Just in terms of mollusc features, we do have a
Speaker 1: snail episode titled Malacology and a pecnonodology episode all about scallops,
Speaker 1: but just a little trivia. So Evan got their masters
Speaker 1: at Trinity, which is in Dublin, Ireland, where I visited
Speaker 1: two weeks ago, and I was told by everyone I
Speaker 1: encountered to take a tour of the Guinness Brewery. However,
Speaker 1: it turns out I don't like beer, but I did
Speaker 1: like that the brewery in homage to some old advertising
Speaker 1: features and animatronic oyster the size of a Maine coon
Speaker 1: cat and it has rubber whistle and lips.
Speaker 2: I do like those. And while I can't go into
Speaker 2: detail about why some of them are like that. If
Speaker 2: you just look at them on the surface, Yeah they
Speaker 2: look hysterical. Yeah, they don't make any sense.
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of the animals have like
Speaker 1: human faces in a way that's unsettling. Maybe I mean
Speaker 1: to the point of oysters having mouths.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Part of my research is why a lot of
Speaker 2: animals have human features and vice versa. And it was
Speaker 2: very much a common trend to assign animal features to
Speaker 2: or assign human behaviorisms to animals, therefore you would depict
Speaker 2: them that way. So of course we still have some
Speaker 2: of these things like peacocks being proud or lions for bravery,
Speaker 2: so things like that.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about weird human faces on animals, because okay,
Speaker 1: that is one of my favorites. When you see an old,
Speaker 1: old piece of artwork that depicts like a soul in
Speaker 1: an animal, like insold in Them, Where did that come from?
Speaker 1: Like in what era did we start mixing the two?
Speaker 2: So fables especially became hugely popular in the Middle Ages
Speaker 2: because telling a bedtime story or a fantasy that had
Speaker 2: a moral message was a really great way of getting
Speaker 2: stuff across to an audience. So I think of ESOPs, fables,
Speaker 2: tortoise and hair, things like that, And eventually this translated
Speaker 2: over into art, partially because it was already predominant in
Speaker 2: royal crests and noble crests of the time, So then
Speaker 2: it became desirable to have these animals represent you. Of course,
Speaker 2: then there are also animals that have a negative connotation.
Speaker 1: How are snails on that scale? How did people look
Speaker 1: upon snails? I mean they're slow, and they are.
Speaker 2: Gooey, they are they're slimy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they can retract, but they're also romantic. They toss
Speaker 1: darts at each other, they doe.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So snails and medieval art, when did this become a motif?
Speaker 2: So, first of all, as a preface, medieval art, a
Speaker 2: lot of it is symbolic or non literal, so that
Speaker 2: just to preface that. However, on the other hand, a
Speaker 2: lot of it is literal. In terms of decorative borders.
Speaker 2: You get a lot of books of hours that have
Speaker 2: these really beautiful like leaf exteriors or like strawberries and
Speaker 2: butterflies and snails. You still see them in the early
Speaker 2: Modern and Baroke periods and still life, so you get
Speaker 2: like a snail on a leaf in a still life
Speaker 2: on a bouquet of flowers. It's always been sort of
Speaker 2: a thing that exists in nature, so they would add
Speaker 2: it if they're adding a decorative nature theme. Now, the
Speaker 2: actual theme of snails being used as what we would
Speaker 2: call bada baj bada bash imagery, which means bottom of
Speaker 2: the page imagery, which is kind of where that marginal
Speaker 2: illumination really comes into play. That and that whole theme
Speaker 2: of like grotesque or dolo lais the sort of funny
Speaker 2: motifs didn't really start until around the eleventh twelfth centuries,
Speaker 2: and it didn't really take off until the thirteenth or
Speaker 2: fourteenth century. So the thirteenth century, especially the late thirteenth
Speaker 2: century was like twelve seventy to about thirteen twenty was
Speaker 2: like the high period for snails. And there's a lot
Speaker 2: of different reasons for that, but the main one, the
Speaker 2: most predominan theory and the one that's most widely accepted,
Speaker 2: is that it is unfortunately a xenophobic response to a
Speaker 2: group of people living in Europe at that time.
Speaker 1: How were they depicted in that way? How did that
Speaker 1: signify a group of people?
Speaker 2: And one group the group is called the Lombards. So
Speaker 2: it's a group of people from the Lombardy region, and
Speaker 2: there was a lot of sour grapes against them because
Speaker 2: they successfully sacked Rome multiple times, to the point that
Speaker 2: they were only actually driven off by Charlemagne in the
Speaker 2: ninth century.
Speaker 1: And a side note, the Lombards came from the small
Speaker 1: tribe of Germanic origin, and between the mid five hundreds
Speaker 1: to late seven hundreds, about seventy five years after the
Speaker 1: fall of the Roman Empire, the Lombards absolutely kicked ass
Speaker 1: in what is now Italy.
Speaker 2: So because of that, a lot of people hated the Lombards.
Speaker 2: They were not legally allowed to own land, they were ostracized,
Speaker 2: and they were barred from most professions because they couldn't
Speaker 2: go into things like apprenticeships or schools, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: one of the things that they were able to turn
Speaker 2: to was u sree and money lending, which was seen
Speaker 2: as a greedy, frowned upon practice. In other words, they
Speaker 2: were slimy.
Speaker 1: Got it where nowadays, wow, you charge interest on something.
Speaker 1: Why do people who broker student loans with like Bonker's interests?
Speaker 1: Why aren't they Why is that interest is definitely celebrated These.
Speaker 2: Days bring back snails, right.
Speaker 1: No one was looking for a man in finance six
Speaker 1: or five blue eyes or whatever. That guy would be
Speaker 1: a snail. Wall Street dudes would leave trails of mucus,
Speaker 1: and not in a good way, so they were seen
Speaker 1: as slimy. And then were they depicted as such in
Speaker 1: the margins, as doing things to someone else? Were they
Speaker 1: shown as perpetrators of evil? Or were they shown as
Speaker 1: just unsavory to be around?
Speaker 2: So in the margins it was mostly unsavory to be around,
Speaker 2: or also satire. So say that the high time for
Speaker 2: these images was around twelve seventy to thirteen twenty, and
Speaker 2: that is true. But the high period of snails as
Speaker 2: an allegory for the Lombards or for anything really in
Speaker 2: terms of literature and writing, was actually the eleventh and
Speaker 2: twelfth century, So it was about one hundred and two
Speaker 2: hundred years earlier. And so we have a lot of
Speaker 2: writings from people like John of Salisbury, JACQUESA Vita be
Speaker 2: Lru Dejarda, and some other people whose names I cannot pronounce.
Speaker 2: We have a lot of their writings. Odo Fredo, who
Speaker 2: wrote about the Lombard invasion and the slow and study
Speaker 2: invasion that it was because it was not something that
Speaker 2: happened in a day. It was a slow creeping invasion,
Speaker 2: similar to how snails can infest a field of cabbage.
Speaker 2: And there are a couple early poems and just writings
Speaker 2: on the Lombard invasion, and these all were French and
Speaker 2: Italian poems. And in these literary depictions, the snails are,
Speaker 2: like I said, depicted as a sort of slow creeping invasion,
Speaker 2: but also depicted as cowards who will hide back in
Speaker 2: their shell at any sign of a threat.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: But because snails aren't exactly what you would consider a
Speaker 2: threat themselves, it became a sort of satire to think
Speaker 2: of running away or a fear of snails as basically
Speaker 2: being a form of it's basically being ridiculous, like who
Speaker 2: would be scared of a snail? And John of Salisbury
Speaker 2: actually wrote, quite literally the fear of snails is ridiculous
Speaker 2: in one of his writings.
Speaker 1: Hoo boy, I needed to know who John of Salisbury
Speaker 1: was and why they named a stake after him. So
Speaker 1: John of Salisbury was English, lived in the eleven hundreds
Speaker 1: and was a philosopher and an author and a bishop.
Speaker 1: He didn't get a ton of praise in his actual life,
Speaker 1: which is sad, but his work was discovered much later
Speaker 1: and he's now considered this leading figure of his time.
Speaker 1: He was a big fan of education. He thought that
Speaker 1: education was a moral and not simply intellectual pursuit, and
Speaker 1: he believed in science. He also thought that the medical
Speaker 1: establishment at the time was more intent on making money
Speaker 1: than actually healing patients. So yes, he was very, very
Speaker 1: ahead of his time. Anyway, unshockingly, the King didn't like him,
Speaker 1: so John Salisbury became an expat. He was off. He
Speaker 1: was like he bounced to France. High stakes. Yes, the
Speaker 1: high steaks. What's up with the weird fried hamburger patty
Speaker 1: that we call the Salisbury steak has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with John. Rather, it was named after some other dude,
Speaker 1: a Civil War era doctor James H. Salisbury, who, according
Speaker 1: to our friend Workipedia, was known for his advocacy of
Speaker 1: a meat centered, low vegetable diet to promote health, and
Speaker 1: it was possibly the earliest known fad diet. He called
Speaker 1: it muscle pulp of beef, overpriced medical care, carnivore diets. Dang,
Speaker 1: the more things change, more they stay the same. That
Speaker 1: should terrify you.
Speaker 2: At the time, it was actually a fairly political statement
Speaker 2: because the snails were already being associated with the Lombard people.
Speaker 2: It was essentially saying him, these people aren't a threat.
Speaker 2: It was sort of what the woke mob would do nowadays,
Speaker 2: was saying sort of things. But at the time they
Speaker 2: really were seen as a representation of these people. And
Speaker 2: it only stuck around because the Lombards, like I said,
Speaker 2: they went into things like your serene money lending, so
Speaker 2: they were seen as slimy. They also because they couldn't
Speaker 2: own land, and they were nomadic, so they had their
Speaker 2: house on their back in the same way a snail
Speaker 2: has its shelf. And they also would kind of do
Speaker 2: the slow and steady invasion where there would be a
Speaker 2: couple of them coming into a city, and then there
Speaker 2: would be some more coming into a city. And this
Speaker 2: is how the xenophobia was perceived in the Middle Ages.
Speaker 2: This is how they viewed it. This was essentially an
Speaker 2: invasion of these outsiders coming in, taking their money and
Speaker 2: making a nuisance of themselves. I'd like to reiterate that
Speaker 2: this is not one hundred percent proven, but we do
Speaker 2: know that it was called the Lombard snail in literary
Speaker 2: text and in the text that I mentioned, such as
Speaker 2: the Gallianist, so they it is explicitly stated that the
Speaker 2: Lombards are like snails.
Speaker 1: How did the Lombards react to this? Were they looking
Speaker 1: at a lot of manuscripts too, or not? Well, yeah, okay, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, the thing is that we don't have a lot
Speaker 2: of perspectives from Lombards in this time period simply because
Speaker 2: they were so ostracized and anything that they might have
Speaker 2: written or published or anything along those lines would have
Speaker 2: been repressed. They weren't very popular people, as I've mentioned,
Speaker 2: and will get into Jews as well, because there was
Speaker 2: also some stigma with them with Jewish expulsion and jew
Speaker 2: serri that they were involved in. But the Lombards, essentially,
Speaker 2: as far as we can tell, we're either very aware
Speaker 2: of this happening simply because they were so ostracized in general,
Speaker 2: and so they would basically get called slurs on the
Speaker 2: street or be chased out of places, which did happen.
Speaker 2: But whether or not they were able to politically maneuver
Speaker 2: themselves in terms of writing or illustration, we're just not
Speaker 2: sure because we don't have any extant records. I can
Speaker 2: imagine they weren't pleased, but we're not entirely sure.
Speaker 1: And then did those snail motifs start to be used
Speaker 1: in antisemitic statements or did it evolve into that and
Speaker 1: how long did that take before it was used to
Speaker 1: promote more xenophobia.
Speaker 2: So, okay, that's a really interesting one because essentially the
Speaker 2: snail has always sort of represented relatively negative things. The
Speaker 2: overall interpretation of a snail is yuck, which I feel
Speaker 2: really bad for the snails about because they're just trying
Speaker 2: their best. So when I've talked about the usury and
Speaker 2: this sort of thing, is that the Lombards were only
Speaker 2: really seen as a sort of threat in the eleventh
Speaker 2: twelfth centuries. By the time the thirteen the fourteenth centuries
Speaker 2: had come around, which is when I said the heightend
Speaker 2: art was the threat or that people perceived specifically as
Speaker 2: xenophobic interpretation of it was now on the Jews.
Speaker 1: So after one hundred years or so, the focus turned
Speaker 1: away from the Lombards and toward Jewish populations. Because the
Speaker 1: cultural enemy can be a moving target, but there's always
Speaker 1: a target.
Speaker 2: And because the Jewish people at that time in Europe
Speaker 2: had pretty much the same rights as the Lombards did
Speaker 2: not just the same things. They were also seen as
Speaker 2: dark because they turned away from the light aka Jesus.
Speaker 2: They began to be ridiculed a lot in art and texts.
Speaker 2: So when I say this high period was around twelve
Speaker 2: seventy to thirteen twenty, it really was because that was
Speaker 2: also the time when anti Jewish sentiments and anti Semitic
Speaker 2: sentiments were becoming hugely predominant in these countries. There were
Speaker 2: a number of Jewish expulsions, famously the English one in
Speaker 2: twelve ninety where they essentially evicted every Jewish person from England.
Speaker 2: It was a horrible time, and it's something that is
Speaker 2: not only represented by snails, and famously by other things,
Speaker 2: including birds. In fact, the whole in the Middle Ages,
Speaker 2: owls were not seen as a symbol of wisdom. They
Speaker 2: were seen as creatures the night, the dark, therefore turning
Speaker 2: away from the light like the Jews turned away from Jesus.
Speaker 2: And the whole stereotype of the hooked nose comes from
Speaker 2: owl's beaks that were used in medieval artwork, in the
Speaker 2: same way that the stereotype of bankers or greedy or
Speaker 2: money grubbing comes from the fact that many Jews had
Speaker 2: to turn to your sur your money lending as their
Speaker 2: only form of income.
Speaker 1: So were these in some ways like political cartoons from
Speaker 1: a radical right kind of perspective, Were these like the
Speaker 1: Fox News of political cartoons?
Speaker 2: Very good analogy, and yes, frankly this was a lot
Speaker 2: of them. However, you do also have the left wing
Speaker 2: perspective of that, in that there were people like John
Speaker 2: of Salisbury who wrote that the fear of snails is ridiculous,
Speaker 2: So these are also just people. But in essence, most
Speaker 2: of it was very much a statement, a xenophobic statement,
Speaker 2: like a Fox News News report on how immigrants were
Speaker 2: ruining the country. And this comes up quite a bit
Speaker 2: as well in terms of what's called the Lombard Debacle,
Speaker 2: which is a whole esoteric socio political situation that happened
Speaker 2: around this time period that then translated into the Jewish debacle.
Speaker 2: But it was very much a thing of these people
Speaker 2: are coming, and they're here to get us and take
Speaker 2: our money and our jobs and our lives. What happened
Speaker 2: and not life is in murder, but as in take
Speaker 2: the way of life. And what happened from this is
Speaker 2: people started to get upset with the upper classes that
Speaker 2: they were not preventing this. Oh wow, So most of
Speaker 2: the artwork, instead of being fiercely anti Lombard or anti Semitic,
Speaker 2: which it still is, the message wasn't meant for them
Speaker 2: because they were also highly unlikely to be the ones
Speaker 2: to read it. The message was meant for the nobility,
Speaker 2: the merchants, all of those sort of people who would
Speaker 2: be the ones that could afford these manuscripts, who could
Speaker 2: have them commissioned, who could have them see them in libraries.
Speaker 2: So the whole thing about the Night fighting a snail
Speaker 2: is that the knights are losing, and.
Speaker 1: The knights are the aristocracy exactly.
Speaker 2: So the whole idea of chivalry and nobility and all
Speaker 2: this idea that these people are greater, but they're losing
Speaker 2: against a snail.
Speaker 1: I treated myself to a visual feast of knights in
Speaker 1: full armor hoisting blades towards snails that would be as
Speaker 1: big as a kitchen table. Sometimes the drawings were crude,
Speaker 1: like something a very sad person might sketch on a
Speaker 1: hotel bar. Napkin and others showed this beautiful depth in
Speaker 1: the fold of the mollusks, sort of undulating foot and
Speaker 1: the rounded whirls of the shell. Others have eye stalks
Speaker 1: as long as a human arm reaching around shields toward
Speaker 1: soldiers will Another popular motif involves a naked man fallen
Speaker 1: to his knees begging a snail for his life. Did
Speaker 1: the snails ever get time off or were they always
Speaker 1: on the battlefield? What other snail motifs do you see?
Speaker 1: What else are the snails doing in these manuscripts?
Speaker 2: Some of them are just hanging out, which is the
Speaker 2: most ideal form of any illustration in medieval manuscripts. If
Speaker 2: I was in a medieval manuscript, I'd love to be
Speaker 2: just like a little frog on a strawberry. A lot
Speaker 2: of them are just hanging out, just chilling. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: just chilling me and my homies. So, like I said earlier,
Speaker 2: some of them were used just as decoration in terms
Speaker 2: of like nature scenes, borders, the decorative borders, things like that.
Speaker 2: I've written a paper on the snail and bird motif
Speaker 2: where a lot of birds of different types, usually what
Speaker 2: do we call waiters, are eating snails and this could
Speaker 2: be seen. Yeah, so the snails are actually losing in
Speaker 2: this one. Unfortunate for the snails. But this one probably
Speaker 2: had a much more literal interpretation because a lot of
Speaker 2: these monks and people who are writing these manuscripts, they
Speaker 2: only were able to survive because of agriculture and even monasteries.
Speaker 2: They grew their own food, and so one of the
Speaker 2: biggest things that they would deal with would be pests,
Speaker 2: including snails. So it's still very much negative connotation. Snails
Speaker 2: were never really seen as a good animal. They were cowardly,
Speaker 2: they hid away, and they were slimy. They're frankly gross
Speaker 2: to a lot of people, and I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people still share that sentiment, which is unfortunate. You
Speaker 2: should go outside and a pedes snail. They're really cute.
Speaker 2: You can have snails as petsnow as well, which is lovely.
Speaker 1: Again, we have a Malacology episode about snails, but unless
Speaker 1: you're in East Africa, don't adopt a giant African land snail,
Speaker 1: which are casually called gals but can uncasually grow up
Speaker 1: to eight inches in length and if released, they become
Speaker 1: like the Jurassic Park of invasive snail species. But from
Speaker 1: an allegorical medieval art perspective.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it sort of. Snails were a slow and
Speaker 2: study invasion across all interpretations, Souse. I'm sure you know.
Speaker 2: Academia is pretty cutthroat, and one of my favorite things
Speaker 2: to do is disprove long dead authors on their theat. Okay,
Speaker 2: they'll never know that I'm out here doing it, but
Speaker 2: it brings me satisfaction. So one of the interpretations of
Speaker 2: snails that unfortunately persists is that snails in medieval aren't
Speaker 2: represented the resurrection, which is a decided of the positive
Speaker 2: thing as opposed to all these negative connotations we've been
Speaker 2: going through.
Speaker 1: This would be the resurrection of Jesus Christ as snailcre.
Speaker 2: And this was championed in the nineteenth century by a
Speaker 2: man called the Gumpabus start Ah.
Speaker 1: Yes, the compete bastard, top notch.
Speaker 2: Branding, incredible name, terrible academic writing. His only proof are
Speaker 2: two examples of snails drawn on the same page as
Speaker 2: a crucifixion scene.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: That's it. Two pages, two pages, same book, different books,
Speaker 2: different books. Thank god, otherwise it would have been even
Speaker 2: more embarrassing. Does it hold any water? No, not really.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of people, hobbyists, generalists, and even
Speaker 2: some other medievalists still kind of accept that as a
Speaker 2: reasonable a reasonable interpretation, but it doesn't, frankly, make much
Speaker 2: sense to me. I've looked into it quite a bit.
Speaker 2: An entire chapter of my thesis is just disproving this
Speaker 2: man's claims. It's my favorite chapter. Frankly, the entire chapter
Speaker 2: is No, it doesn't hold any water. There's no real
Speaker 2: interpretation of a snail representing the resurrection. I could understand
Speaker 2: butterflies with coming out of the chrysalis or that stage
Speaker 2: from larvae to adult, that does represent resurrection, but snails
Speaker 2: have never really had that sort of stage in life,
Speaker 2: so it doesn't fit with the other ones. And because
Speaker 2: all of the literature about snails is so negative, it
Speaker 2: wouldn't make sense for them to just randomly throw in
Speaker 2: this one positive thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, any idea what it was supposed to symbolize?
Speaker 2: I really I really don't know. I would assume that
Speaker 2: quite frankly, it's just decoration. And then Lillian mc randall,
Speaker 2: who is the preeminent Unfortunately she passed away a while ago,
Speaker 2: but she was the preeminent expert on Gothic marginalia. Her
Speaker 2: seminal article to the Stay on Gothic marginal Warfare in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine basically called deml idiots, and frankly, I agree
Speaker 2: with her and I wish she was still alive because
Speaker 2: I would love to shake her hand for that.
Speaker 1: Well, oh my god, I do have questions from listeners.
Speaker 1: Can I fire them off?
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, let's go.
Speaker 1: And this week we're splitting it between two causes. Evan
Speaker 1: requested some of it go to a Palestinian refugee fund
Speaker 1: because they say that is xenophobia in the same way
Speaker 1: that the anti Semitism or anti Lombard statement would have
Speaker 1: been at the time. So we'll be donating to the
Speaker 1: World Central Kitchen, which operates in a war zone and
Speaker 1: remains committed to serving Palestinian families, providing meals wherever and
Speaker 1: whenever possible, they say, and in a blog post from
Speaker 1: last week, the World Central Kitchen rites last week their
Speaker 1: team was able to cook at a field kitchen, producing
Speaker 1: more than fifty two thousand meals, So a donation will
Speaker 1: go to World Central Kitchen. Evan also wanted to keep
Speaker 1: with the theme of deportations and immigration and says that
Speaker 1: since we're talking about Jewish expulsion, they don't think that
Speaker 1: you should be ousting immigrants. So we'll also donate to
Speaker 1: the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU, which helps fund
Speaker 1: strategic litigation, advocacy, and organizing needed to take on ice
Speaker 1: and border patrol abuses and violations and help pave a
Speaker 1: path to citizenship for thousands, as well as uphold all
Speaker 1: of our civil liberties. So thank you to Evan for
Speaker 1: heads up on that. Now a word from sponsors. All right,
Speaker 1: you have questions about medieval snail art. Let's unpack. Okay, great,
Speaker 1: Miss the Fish Bridget Schraders and Mouse Paxton want to know.
Speaker 1: Miss asked, do people get tattoos of medieval snails? Bridget
Speaker 1: wants to know which medieval snails would make the best tattoo.
Speaker 2: Ooh, okay. These are good questions, and considering that I
Speaker 2: am covered in tattoos, I would like to just present
Speaker 2: myself as an expert on this topic. People do get
Speaker 2: tattoos of medieval snails. There's actually this tattoo artist here
Speaker 2: based in London, who I am desperately trying to set
Speaker 2: up an appointment with, who does medieval woodcut tattoos.
Speaker 1: Art of gold. We will link his work on the
Speaker 1: web page for this episode in case you need a
Speaker 1: tattoo to long for.
Speaker 2: And I just I need all of them. But people
Speaker 2: do get tattoos of medieval snails, and sometimes frankly in
Speaker 2: the same vein that I've seen I've heard other people
Speaker 2: on this podcast talk about it. Is Sometimes I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't have done that, because it is an anti
Speaker 2: Semitic statement, But of course people don't know, and it
Speaker 2: just looks like a funny little thing to them.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the art transcends the meaning if
Speaker 1: it's not done with that intention, if people have no
Speaker 1: idea that the history of it.
Speaker 2: I'm very much a supporter of you cannot separate the
Speaker 2: art from the artist. But for most of these things,
Speaker 2: we don't actually know who the individual artist was, and
Speaker 2: they have enough time has passed, and I'm not saying
Speaker 2: it was an appropriate way of inter are putting these
Speaker 2: animals or these people. It was not an okay theme.
Speaker 2: But I do think that it has sort of become
Speaker 2: a thing. And there are enough decorative and just weird
Speaker 2: medieval snails that don't necessarily mean anything as far as
Speaker 2: we can tell, that are just there purely because they
Speaker 2: look cool, So I'd say, do it. I mean, someone
Speaker 2: who knows a lot of a lot about them, will
Speaker 2: sometimes internally cringe, but frankly, it's been long enough and
Speaker 2: you don't have the same sort of association, and no
Speaker 2: one other than perhaps me and now you and the
Speaker 2: listeners will even know that there was originally a xenophobic
Speaker 2: connotation to these h.
Speaker 1: What about dietary? A lot of people Emily Kristen, Brenda Graham,
Speaker 1: Lizzie Sonia Bird, honeybee dos and Earl of Gramlekain docs
Speaker 1: asked so many cultures of the world joy snails, from
Speaker 1: French escargo to Nigerian pepper snails. It's all delicious. Did
Speaker 1: people eat these medieval snails or are they just for decoration?
Speaker 1: But yeah, Lizzie wants to know are people eating snails
Speaker 1: back then? At what point did, especially in France, did
Speaker 1: people go from like fearing and despising snails to eating
Speaker 1: them up?
Speaker 2: First, you have to call it France, obviously, that's France.
Speaker 2: In France where actually this theme it was most predominant
Speaker 2: in France, England and Italy, and so it could almost
Speaker 2: be seen as a way of getting one up on
Speaker 2: the Lombards if you eat them. Oh, so snails have
Speaker 2: been enjoyed that we have records of them being enjoyed
Speaker 2: in Greco Roman times. We also know that they were
Speaker 2: farmed fairly early on, and it really depends on the
Speaker 2: type of snail. But yes, they were eaten in the
Speaker 2: same way that birds were eaten, so it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: have that distinct connection because we know that, for example,
Speaker 2: chickens would have been eaten, but chickens are also a
Speaker 2: form of cowardice, so that people wouldn't have been eating
Speaker 2: a chicken thinking hah, take that, the same way they
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been eating a snail. Going hat take that, Lombards,
Speaker 2: you got you back. It was just a food type,
Speaker 2: and I did, actually I did look into this because
Speaker 2: I was curious if it did have any sort of bearing,
Speaker 2: and honestly it doesn't. People will eat things that taste good,
Speaker 2: and snails with butter and garlic tasted good, so they
Speaker 2: ate them.
Speaker 1: It also seems like if you there pests in your
Speaker 1: cabbage field, it's free food. Why not just yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I talked about this in this snail episode.
Speaker 2: But my mom I love that episode.
Speaker 1: As you can tell, I also love that one. But yeah,
Speaker 1: my mom's grandmother would send her to the graveyard with
Speaker 1: a burlap sack to go pick snails, and then she'd
Speaker 1: have to ride the subway back with this oozing burlap sack,
Speaker 1: and then they'd feed them corn meal and then they
Speaker 1: eat them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I can imagine the same thing was
Speaker 2: going down in medieval Europe. If you've got them anyways
Speaker 2: in your field and you have to get them out
Speaker 2: of the field, might as well cook them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh my gosh, Okay, I really loved this question.
Speaker 1: Do you when I say the cool s? Do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean?
Speaker 2: I do know what you mean because we all learned
Speaker 2: to draw that in school. It's ingrained in us. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm completely aware.
Speaker 1: Chloe Katie and Elena Gorilla want to know, do you
Speaker 1: think this snail versus night doodle back then was a
Speaker 1: similar trend to how we all do the little s
Speaker 1: on school assignments? Is this how we all drew that
Speaker 1: s in our notebooks in elementary school? Elena wants to know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: cool s is in the margins? What do you think
Speaker 1: of them?
Speaker 2: Yes? So, first of all, I would like to ask
Speaker 2: these people if they would like to be my co
Speaker 2: authors on my upcoming paper, because that is the best
Speaker 2: take that I have ever heard. The simple answers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we have a lot of these marginalia are just essentially
Speaker 2: doodles that were added in by the monks. So a
Speaker 2: lot of them, or actually the majority of marginalia are
Speaker 2: by definition marginal means that it's on the margins. It
Speaker 2: doesn't have to do with the.
Speaker 1: Text, okay, so just a quick recap of definitions, and
Speaker 1: illuminated manuscript means it has pictures and drawings and embellishment.
Speaker 1: A Book of Hours is like a fancy prayer book
Speaker 1: that some people owned, and the bottom of the page
Speaker 1: illustrations were more serious and planned out, while the marginalia
Speaker 1: were sometimes funny, less formal drawings on the sides of
Speaker 1: the pages. So marginalia was on the side figuratively and literally.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they were just doodles, and a lot of
Speaker 2: them did have socioeconomical or political statements to them, like
Speaker 2: we've been going into, Like these snails did have a statement,
Speaker 2: but they weren't necessarily connected to the texts. So yeah,
Speaker 2: in a way, it was sort of like the cool s.
Speaker 2: It was just a lot more xenophobic.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's just Sarah. I wanted to know, is it
Speaker 1: possible they just liked drawing snails, Susan Singley, as did
Speaker 1: medieval copyists just really liked drawn snails and their tiny
Speaker 1: coiled shells Anya Marcellack, Laville Mouse Paxton, first time question
Speaker 1: asker Christy Ferrar also want to Know, Christy Want to Know,
Speaker 1: and their coworker Anna if it's possible that snails represented
Speaker 1: some sexual innuendo or was it mundane with the spiral?
Speaker 1: But do you think snails were fun to draw at
Speaker 1: any point or was it really more about the symbolism.
Speaker 2: I think it depends on the drawing. Is I mentioned
Speaker 2: a bit like decorative borders? I think in that case, yeah,
Speaker 2: it is. They're fun to draw. I mean it's a spiral.
Speaker 2: They're pretty easy. Frankly, as opposed to animals or four legs,
Speaker 2: you don't really have to worry about that with a snail.
Speaker 2: Spirals look cool, shells look cool. They're really fun. No
Speaker 2: people collect shells. It's just a thing that's fun to draw.
Speaker 2: If there is a very particular scene playing out, I
Speaker 2: would say that yes, that is a lot more symbolic. However,
Speaker 2: another thing that I didn't really get into, but does happen,
Speaker 2: is some of these medieval artists might not have known
Speaker 2: the symbolism and were simply copying earlier works and they
Speaker 2: were like, Oh, that scene looks sick, I'm going to
Speaker 2: draw it. So ones that date from about twelve seventy
Speaker 2: to thirteen twenty, which would I say is the height
Speaker 2: of this snail symbolism, especially in artwork. They would have
Speaker 2: been aware it would have been drawn something that they
Speaker 2: would know. But if they were just drawing on a
Speaker 2: border and they just drew a snail, that's just because
Speaker 2: they wanted to add a snail. And in terms of
Speaker 2: the sexual connotation, that's a really interesting one because that
Speaker 2: one is something that came up, and it does come
Speaker 2: up a little bit in my research, but that's actually
Speaker 2: somewhat of an earlier and a later interpretation. It's hard
Speaker 2: to say that medieval snails, even though I've said a
Speaker 2: lot about their symbolism and theirs xenophobia that was related
Speaker 2: to them. In general, with medieval art, it's hard to
Speaker 2: pin down one exact thing for all of them, and
Speaker 2: it is possible that in different places, in different times,
Speaker 2: there were different interpretations that were put on them. Frankly,
Speaker 2: I can say that they were a symbol of the
Speaker 2: Lombards and the Jewish people. Because we have texts to
Speaker 2: support that. That doesn't mean that that was their entire thing.
Speaker 2: They had. Like I said, they were also pests, but
Speaker 2: they were also things in nature.
Speaker 1: Some people wanted to know about the process. Earl of
Speaker 1: Gramulcan Dig, Aaron White Hadley, Lauren Alegra wanted to know
Speaker 1: Indig's words Tyrian purple technically red, who's the ye olden
Speaker 1: snails have been drawn using the color from thine owned shells?
Speaker 1: Will unpack that? In an aside, Hadley also asked, were
Speaker 1: these snails a hot topic because of their use for
Speaker 1: making a rich purple dye? And yes, Dig wanted to
Speaker 1: know about this Tyrian purple, which is also called royal purple,
Speaker 1: imperial purple, or imperial dye. And it is laboriously extracted
Speaker 1: from this sea snail. And it was so precious and
Speaker 1: expensive a dye that only royals were permitted to wear it.
Speaker 1: So when Dig asked, moreover, hootst ye oldened snails have
Speaker 1: been drawing using the colors from thine owned shells. I
Speaker 1: think they meant, would you draw the snail from whence
Speaker 1: its very pigment came? So? According to a two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine blog post by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Speaker 1: titled pen and Parchment Drawing in the Middle Ages, the
Speaker 1: artists had to make their own inks and pigments and
Speaker 1: usually concocted something with a plant binder like sap or
Speaker 1: they used animal based glue, and they colored it with
Speaker 1: clay or smashed up plant roots or oak galls, sometimes
Speaker 1: crushed bugs orneral powder like lapis lazuli, which I thought
Speaker 1: was lazuli until I had to re record this aside. Now,
Speaker 1: was this meditative to make these inks? Maybe? Was it tedious? Apparently,
Speaker 1: which is why apprentices were usually assigned to it, like
Speaker 1: some sullen interns and a copy machine. Just in case
Speaker 1: that answers your question, le Earl asked what was used
Speaker 1: for ink and pigments? Aaron wants to know. Were there
Speaker 1: any artistic conventions that they had to follow, like the
Speaker 1: process of drawing? Can you give us any info on
Speaker 1: like were they using a quill and ink or paint
Speaker 1: or how did you make this?
Speaker 2: In terms of art processes in the Middle Ages. Is
Speaker 2: because a lot of it was sort of symbolic or
Speaker 2: otherwise interpretive. You can see that it all sort of
Speaker 2: looks the same, so the human faces on animals, or
Speaker 2: this weirdness as we would call it today, this sort
Speaker 2: of perceived weirdness.
Speaker 1: The mister burns of it all, the thin limbed car tunish,
Speaker 1: awkward bodied, uncanny, valley weird vibes.
Speaker 2: It really is something that just was a trend that
Speaker 2: just continued and continued and continued in the same way
Speaker 2: that Cubism was a trend, or that the Renaissance going
Speaker 2: back to classical motifs was a trend. It was just
Speaker 2: what was popular at that time. In terms of the process,
Speaker 2: most of these illustrations would have been made, like I said,
Speaker 2: by monks or nuns. Sometimes there are people outside of that,
Speaker 2: but the majority would have been done in a monastery
Speaker 2: or a convent, and they would have been taught in
Speaker 2: a specific way, and the same way that cartoonists, for
Speaker 2: things like The New York Times have to have their
Speaker 2: comics be somewhat similar or understandable so that people can
Speaker 2: perceive what they're saying. In terms of equipment, paint at
Speaker 2: that time, and ink and all of that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: so quills, yes, although quite frequently they would use a
Speaker 2: brush or a stylus instead, just for that fine control
Speaker 2: quills are great, but they can scratch, which I'm sure
Speaker 2: everyone knows that whole thing of the scratching of the quail.
Speaker 2: So if you're writing on very expensive vellum cowskin, just
Speaker 2: to add that in is this was all done on skin,
Speaker 2: so it was a hugely expensive undertaking and you did
Speaker 2: not want to mess that up. Ah, So things that
Speaker 2: could cause issues, like quails that frequently scratched or could
Speaker 2: cause ink blots, you wanted to avoid that at all costs.
Speaker 2: So the most common was usually a brush. And we
Speaker 2: do have some charcoal or pencil underdrawings of these things,
Speaker 2: so we know that they did sketch out a lot
Speaker 2: of these as well. But at that time, depending on
Speaker 2: how much training they had, if this was your whole life,
Speaker 2: you could get to the point where you could draw
Speaker 2: something without needing to sketch it out. So people like
Speaker 2: a mister Doodle, you know how, they can just immediately
Speaker 2: do that drawing or the s. I don't need to
Speaker 2: sketch out the cool s anymore. I know exactly how
Speaker 2: to do it. I do the six lines and then
Speaker 2: the triangles and then do the slants. So yeah, very similar.
Speaker 2: It would have just been something they were able to do.
Speaker 2: Colors might have varied, but the overall base would have
Speaker 2: been the same.
Speaker 1: Just a side note, I didn't know who mister Doodle was,
Speaker 1: so I found out for us, and he is a
Speaker 1: British man real named Sam Cox, and his work described
Speaker 1: as graffiti spaghetti looks kind of like Keith Herrings, with
Speaker 1: these thick lines and simple characters, a lot of movement
Speaker 1: and not an inch spared without a drawing. And he
Speaker 1: used to sell his work for a dollar and now
Speaker 1: it auctions into the seven figures Doodle in for cash.
Speaker 2: Speaking of money, paints themselves would have been things like
Speaker 2: I've already mentioned gold leaf, which became quite popular, especially
Speaker 2: in certain things, especially as soon as people got richer
Speaker 2: wanted more ornamentation. Gold leaf was like a thing because
Speaker 2: it's shiny and glittery and it makes you look rich.
Speaker 2: So a lot of books of hours of people of
Speaker 2: nobility or wealthy merchants would have gold leaf pretty much
Speaker 2: all over them.
Speaker 1: And gold leaf, one should note, is extremely thin. I
Speaker 1: knew that, but I didn't know how thin. Apparently it's
Speaker 1: zero point zero zero zero one millimeters or point one
Speaker 1: micrometer and a five millimeter gold nugget can make five
Speaker 1: square feet of foil. Now, by contrast to that point
Speaker 1: one micrometer, the average human hair is about one hundred
Speaker 1: micrometers thick, so gold leaf one one thousandth the thickness
Speaker 1: of a human hair. So yeah, you could use gold
Speaker 1: in your manuscripts. But if you didn't have the time
Speaker 1: or resources for gold beating, as it's called, there were
Speaker 1: other options.
Speaker 2: Other pigments were made from a variety of things, so yes, shells, bugs,
Speaker 2: There was a red bug that I can't quite remember
Speaker 2: the name of, and they would essentially just smush it
Speaker 2: up into making red ink or a red dye for paints.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to say, we have them all over
Speaker 1: our cac die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, those ones. So they were incredibly popular for
Speaker 2: making dyes and pains out of I think a lot
Speaker 2: of red clothes were dyed with them as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still in lipstick, it is. Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: is called Carmine dye or crimson lake, and it's made
Speaker 1: from Kacha neal insects. And I can tell you when
Speaker 1: you try to hose or scrape them off an infected cactus,
Speaker 1: it looks like a blood bath. It's full tarantino cactus time.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in lipsticks you may see this bug derived
Speaker 1: carmine dye listed as natural red number four, So squishing bugs.
Speaker 1: It's not cruelty free. Neither was Medieval manuscript paper, which
Speaker 1: was essentially leather. Parchment refers to a writing surface that
Speaker 1: was made from skin, usually a very thin layer of
Speaker 1: sheep skin. But vellum is a type of parchment made
Speaker 1: only from calf skin. Sometimes the calves were so young
Speaker 1: they were still born. So as an artist, if you
Speaker 1: did an oopsie, you weren't headed to Michael's for a restock.
Speaker 1: Did they have erasers? Do you think like if you
Speaker 1: screwed up, could you go back? It was a white out?
Speaker 2: It was there white out. Sometimes I wish there was,
Speaker 2: because I've read some really weird things in manuscripts, and
Speaker 2: sometimes I wish they had erased some stuff. Because it's vellum,
Speaker 2: you can't erase it in the same way. It sort
Speaker 2: of absorbs into the vellum. It sort of binds with
Speaker 2: the material in the same way that when you draw
Speaker 2: on your skin, it kind of leads a little bit.
Speaker 2: What you could do is you could lightly scrape the
Speaker 2: top layer off. However, it is a bit obvious some
Speaker 2: of the books that we have at work on vellum
Speaker 2: or things like that. But you can tell when something
Speaker 2: has been covered over it because there's a little bit
Speaker 2: of a dip where they've essentially just removed a part
Speaker 2: of the layer of the of the vellum. Other times
Speaker 2: they just paint over it. Yeah, what about species?
Speaker 1: Jordan, alex Ertman, Michelle Smith, Earl and Neil wanted to know.
Speaker 1: In Jordan's words, do the nails and medieval art seem
Speaker 1: to be based on actual species of snails like near
Speaker 1: where the manuscripts were created?
Speaker 2: Okay? So yes and no, okay, the common understanding of
Speaker 2: a snail is a slug with a shell on it
Speaker 2: in terms of how they look, and because the most
Speaker 2: of these come from Europe, a lot of the snails
Speaker 2: do look pretty similar overall, and in fact, in some
Speaker 2: of these illustrations there were more fantastical colors used, because
Speaker 2: like a blue shell would look a lot cooler than
Speaker 2: just a brown and white shell. Snails that we know
Speaker 2: of from other places, like the African giant snail, probably
Speaker 2: weren't used simply because there wasn't as much knowledge on them,
Speaker 2: and because medieval art and these snails weren't necessarily intended
Speaker 2: to represent specific types unless it was a b stiary,
Speaker 2: probably didn't matter that much. In b STA areas, which
Speaker 2: of course go over different types of animals, there would
Speaker 2: be specifics actually laid out, and you can see there's
Speaker 2: a couple from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries where you
Speaker 2: can actually see it talks about different shell patterns and
Speaker 2: different coloration of the slime and skin that they leave behind,
Speaker 2: which is quite interesting. So they were aware that there
Speaker 2: were different types and speci cheese, but it didn't necessarily
Speaker 2: plant these because they all look the same. They've got
Speaker 2: a shell and a slimy body.
Speaker 1: What about when they went out of fashion? Mick A
Speaker 1: CoV Via axelrod Anastasia Press, Guido Fairy, Susan Singley, Olive Wing,
Speaker 1: Lizzy Martinez wanted to know. Lizzy said, wow, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: this is so weird and cool, and my husband is
Speaker 1: also like wow. So my question when or why do
Speaker 1: they stop including snails in artwork of the style? Did
Speaker 1: one year they retire snails and that was it? I
Speaker 1: just love that. There's a lot of questions that are
Speaker 1: just like wait, what what? We had a lot of
Speaker 1: questions that were just like, wait, why, what the fuck?
Speaker 1: What the fuck? My question is why? My question is
Speaker 1: also what the fuck what? My main question is uh
Speaker 1: what one very more question. Huh huh. So many questions
Speaker 1: that just say what but decline. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: decline real quick.
Speaker 2: I mean, my my immediate reaction before I started researching
Speaker 2: these was also what the fuck and why, which is
Speaker 2: how I got into it. I've had this for a
Speaker 2: lot of things. There are other things that I've always
Speaker 2: just been like, Okay, I'm going to hyperfixate on this
Speaker 2: now and find out everything about this. The snails was
Speaker 2: just one that happened to stick. I'm not sure why
Speaker 2: my family and friends all keep giving me snail themed things.
Speaker 2: I'm wearing a snail shirt to today's session. They're not
Speaker 2: even my favorite animal, but everyone just thinks that once
Speaker 2: you write on snails, they will give you snail related
Speaker 2: stuff for the rest of your life. I cannot escape
Speaker 2: but the decline. I really wish the decline would come
Speaker 2: in terms of gifts that my family give me. But
Speaker 2: the decline, like I said, so, the height of it
Speaker 2: was around twelve seventy to thirteen twenty, and unfortunately, the
Speaker 2: decline did come because of things like the Jewish expulsions.
Speaker 1: So yes, this is not amusing at all, and we
Speaker 1: discussed in the Genocideology episode there have long been populations targeted,
Speaker 1: nearly eliminated, and wholly destroyed by forces that wanted their
Speaker 1: land or in no way welcomed them into their territory.
Speaker 1: And in that Genocideology episode with doctor Dirk Moses, we
Speaker 1: also discuss the generational trauma and the cyclical nature of
Speaker 1: these expulsions which have persisted through the ages despite our
Speaker 1: horrified hindsight.
Speaker 2: It's sort of very depressive to go into these negative
Speaker 2: things about what could otherwise be perceived as a very
Speaker 2: funny piece of art. So it's not good humor, but
Speaker 2: it was a form of humor of a way of
Speaker 2: dealing of it and poking fun at the nobility. So
Speaker 2: after the Jewish expulsion, particularly in England and twelve ninety
Speaker 2: and subconcurrent ones that happened in places like France and
Speaker 2: Italy or separate city states Jews, then when they were gone,
Speaker 2: it becomes to die down. So we actually see between
Speaker 2: thirteen ten and thirteen twenty when it starts to really decline,
Speaker 2: a lot of the stale motifs become a lot more fanciful,
Speaker 2: become a lot more decorative, so they're slowly like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we realize that this is still a thing, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter anymore. Sort of how when memes become
Speaker 2: so distorted, you don't even know the meme says anymore.
Speaker 2: And that decline essentially just kept going. There was a
Speaker 2: slight resurgence in the fifteen hundreds, which had to do
Speaker 2: with again with antisomitic ideals.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, did anyone ever reclaim it as sort of an
Speaker 1: image of persecution, like from populations that have triumphed over
Speaker 1: something or No? Is that just a big no. I
Speaker 1: was hoping that there could be some reclamation of snails
Speaker 1: in that way.
Speaker 2: I think we should reclaim snails twenty twenty five reclaimed snails.
Speaker 2: There wasn't really a reclaim by certain groups of people.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is also like I say, this is
Speaker 2: over five hundred years ago, this is almost a thousand
Speaker 2: years ago. In the case of the Lombard invasion, it's
Speaker 2: over a thousand years ago, and it was only about
Speaker 2: like a fifty year period each time. It wasn't that long,
Speaker 2: so there wasn't really a necessity to reclaim them in
Speaker 2: the way that people do know. So, for example, reclaiming
Speaker 2: the word queer has become a thing. It wasn't as
Speaker 2: widespread and no at that time that need to reclaim things.
Speaker 2: And honestly, a lot of people forgot about it, and
Speaker 2: a lot of people who didn't have access to these
Speaker 2: things wouldn't have even known about it. It wasn't something
Speaker 2: that normal people would have known, so reclaiming it wasn't
Speaker 2: really a thing. Snails did come to mean different things
Speaker 2: in other cultures, and early Greco Roman I think it
Speaker 2: was particularly Greek. Hesiod wrote about it, which was when
Speaker 2: you see snails climbing the stalks of your plants, means
Speaker 2: it's harvest time. That was something that actually comes back
Speaker 2: in the early modern period. The whole idea of snails
Speaker 2: coming out after it rains because it's nice and wet,
Speaker 2: sort of like good signs snails in the spring it
Speaker 2: means that the warmer weather is coming. But these are
Speaker 2: more things they have to do with nature than any symbolism.
Speaker 1: Speaking of nature. Last listener question, Susan Sanely Addie Cappello
Speaker 1: wanted to know Susan botanical question, how much we did
Speaker 1: these monks grow and consume? Addie asked, was someone high
Speaker 1: as a kite when drawing these pictures? Any idea how
Speaker 1: much drugs.
Speaker 2: Were There is a predominant theory.
Speaker 1: Okay, lay it on me.
Speaker 2: There is a predominant theory, and it's one that is
Speaker 2: somewhat scoffed at, but is still got enough tangential evidence
Speaker 2: that it could be true, at least in some cases
Speaker 2: that musty old books produce a fungus that can cause hallucinations.
Speaker 1: Like an ergot.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, one hundred percent, and some a lot more
Speaker 2: cynical people have said, oh, that's why the Bible was written.
Speaker 2: They were hallucinating this figure of Jesus. So it actually
Speaker 2: it's it's something that is quite frequently scoffed at, but
Speaker 2: it is a theory. And yeah, they had recreational drugs
Speaker 2: back then, things like weed in the same way that
Speaker 2: we use it now didn't exist.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so while humans have been using weed for
Speaker 1: the last ten thousand years, it hadn't made its way
Speaker 1: to Europe by the thirteen hundreds. And yeah, we do
Speaker 1: need a cannabis episode. I'm on it. I have an expert,
Speaker 1: but they are very very busy, so believe me, when
Speaker 1: it's done, we're going to be doing it right. But still,
Speaker 1: the monks could have been later, they could have been faded.
Speaker 2: But there was definitely herbal tonics that they would have consumed.
Speaker 2: And well, I can say that a lot of these
Speaker 2: things are weird, and honestly, you know what, if you
Speaker 2: want to believe that they were done by drug induced monks,
Speaker 2: I will not dissuade you of that notion because that
Speaker 2: is hilarious and I wish it were true.
Speaker 1: The monks were making Benedicti's, they were making truces, they
Speaker 1: were drinking alcohol, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm living in Europe like because I grew up
Speaker 2: in the Netherlands. Some of our most famous beer from
Speaker 2: like the Netherlands and Belgium famously come from monasteries because
Speaker 2: that's how they made money. So they one hundred percent
Speaker 2: were drinking and smoking. They were doing a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: I one hundred percent support that idea.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that I got to talk to you
Speaker 1: about this. This has been a joy. This is not
Speaker 1: an episode I thought that I would have the privilege
Speaker 1: of doing. But last questions, I always ask the hardest
Speaker 1: thing about your job as someone who studies medieval snails
Speaker 1: and manuscripts.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, the hardest thing finding a job, I go
Speaker 2: with the employment rate of medieval snail specialists is exceedingly low.
Speaker 2: I've had to gravitate towards as you can tell, old
Speaker 2: books in general palaeography, hoping to find funding for my
Speaker 2: PhD soon, which would be really great. Unfortunately they cost
Speaker 2: a lot. If there's anyone who wants to fund xenophobia
Speaker 2: and medieval manuscripts, please let me know. Holler, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: Just give me a shout. I'm on Instagram. Just let
Speaker 2: me know. But I think the main thing other than
Speaker 2: the job sector is finding the sources, because a lot
Speaker 2: of them are either gone or gibberish or we don't know.
Speaker 2: And finding the sources is hard because even though places
Speaker 2: like a British library or where I was at Trinity College,
Speaker 2: they're digitizing a lot of their manuscripts, not all of
Speaker 2: them are digitized. So when I was writing my thesis,
Speaker 2: I had to physically go to some of these libraries
Speaker 2: and just check the manuscripts to see if there were
Speaker 2: snails anywhere, because they were digitized, so I couldn't like
Speaker 2: look up if they were at end of the book
Speaker 2: because no one knew. So I'd just sit there and
Speaker 2: I'd leaf through this hundred page manuscript. I'd just be like,
Speaker 2: all right, that was worthless. And most of the time,
Speaker 2: unfortunately they didn't have scales, and I would walk away
Speaker 2: really depressed. There was about three solid days where I
Speaker 2: was looking through manuscripts that didn't have any snails in them,
Speaker 2: and I kind of wanted to give up at that point.
Speaker 1: They don't let you bring coffee in those rooms, do they.
Speaker 2: I don't drink coffee. I think if I if I
Speaker 2: I think if I did, I might have been able
Speaker 2: to survive a lot better. I was just trying to
Speaker 2: get super hopped up on sugar every hour or so,
Speaker 2: just that I had the energy to keep going.
Speaker 1: Oh what about your favorite Is there a moment of
Speaker 1: like leafing through books or discovering a motif that you
Speaker 1: were looking for? Like, what's the most joyous part of this?
Speaker 2: I think the best part is finding ones that look terrible,
Speaker 2: because I do. I said, I have a bit of
Speaker 2: a pet peeve against the medieval memes and how people
Speaker 2: are like, oh, they were terrible at drawing. But sometimes
Speaker 2: there are ones that just don't look good. There's one
Speaker 2: that I have highlighted on my Instagram which I have
Speaker 2: named them Neil and Patrick. I'm not entirely sure why,
Speaker 2: but I decided there's were their names, and it's just
Speaker 2: an incredibly fat frog looking at an incredibly fat snail.
Speaker 1: If you go to Evan's Instagram, you'll see their highlighted
Speaker 1: real title simply him.
Speaker 2: And other than the shell. There is no difference in
Speaker 2: their bodies whatsoever. And it is glorious and I desperately
Speaker 2: need artwork of it. And that is my favorite part
Speaker 2: because even though those are sometimes annoying, when I'm actually
Speaker 2: doing research and trying to figure stuff out, it's a
Speaker 2: bit of joy in my life. If there's one thing
Speaker 2: when you're researching some slightly depressing parts of this, like
Speaker 2: we went over, it's always fun to find something that
Speaker 2: can make you laugh.
Speaker 1: If someone did want to explore a medieval art tattoo,
Speaker 1: what motifs are good ones that are might have meaning.
Speaker 2: Don't get an owl. I'm gonna say it right now,
Speaker 2: do not get a medieval owl, because the one is
Speaker 2: the worst. If that's the one that blatantly anti semitic
Speaker 2: in almost all interpretations. If there's just an owl that
Speaker 2: looks like just a biological owl, fine leave it. But
Speaker 2: anything that looks even remotely human as a bird, just
Speaker 2: don't touch it. Safer not to pretty much, all the
Speaker 2: ones of people are gonna be fine. Unless there you
Speaker 2: can blatantly tell that there's something wrong with them, they're
Speaker 2: gonna be fine. Get one of the nuns harvesting a
Speaker 2: tree full of dicks. That one I want myself. I
Speaker 2: think that would make an incredible ode to my own mother,
Speaker 2: who would honestly think it's funny. My father would die
Speaker 2: of a heart attack, but my mom would be thrilled.
Speaker 2: That would be my recommendation. Some of these funky animals,
Speaker 2: like the oyster with the frownie face, highly recommend that
Speaker 2: anything from B series is gonna be fine, because they're
Speaker 2: equally as funny, but they're not meant in a symbolic way,
Speaker 2: so that's always a safe bet.
Speaker 1: You gotta find someone who can take your cat and
Speaker 1: make it into a medieval cat, yes, but a pet
Speaker 1: portrait in the medieval style is pretty baller.
Speaker 2: If anyone wants to do a tortoise shell cat with
Speaker 2: one of those half faces, if anyone wants to do
Speaker 2: that in a medieval style. I will pay you hundreds
Speaker 2: for that. I would paint it on my walls. You
Speaker 2: don't know how much I need that.
Speaker 1: So again, you're on Instagram, You're findable.
Speaker 2: I am on Twitter, I'm on Instagram, i am on
Speaker 2: Tumblr because I'm embarrassingly of that age. I'm on TikTok,
Speaker 2: which is where I think a lot of people will
Speaker 2: know me from talking about art history. Yeah, Blue guy,
Speaker 2: I'm not on Blue Sky yet because I need to
Speaker 2: be because my dad is, and he keeps telling me
Speaker 2: to be. I'm gonna do that this weekend. You have
Speaker 2: say good me into making one, so I will assume
Speaker 2: be under the username Evan Pridmore or something along those lines.
Speaker 2: But as of this weekend, you'll be able to find
Speaker 2: me on Blue Sky.
Speaker 1: It's really good, great news they did start one. We
Speaker 1: now follow each other on Blue Sky. We'll link their
Speaker 1: account in the show notes. Tell them hello, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for doing this. I'm so glad we got
Speaker 1: to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Just thank you for having me on. Thank you for
Speaker 2: this invite. I've been listening since like twenty eighteen, so
Speaker 2: this way. Hi, really, Yeah, I'm an og.
Speaker 1: So ask informative people ignorant questions, because it would be
Speaker 1: weird if everyone was an expert in medieval snails. And
Speaker 1: thank you so much Evan for their time and recording
Speaker 1: this and the passion it takes to specialize in it.
Speaker 1: You have changed our lives with this knowledge. For links
Speaker 1: to the ACLU and Evan's socials, you can see the
Speaker 1: show notes, which also has a link to the episode
Speaker 1: page on our website, which has more links to studies
Speaker 1: and photos and info. We are at Ologies on Blue
Speaker 1: Sky and Instagram. I'm at Ali Ward on both and
Speaker 1: Ali dot Ologies on TikTok. We also have kids safe,
Speaker 1: classroom friendly, shortened versions of Ologies in their own feed.
Speaker 1: Wherever you get podcasts, just look for Smologies, which are
Speaker 1: also linked in the show notes, as is our merch site,
Speaker 1: ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you Aaron Talbert for admitting the
Speaker 1: Ologies podcast Facebook group. Thank you Aveline Malick for making
Speaker 1: our professional transcripts. Kelly ar Dwyer does the website and
Speaker 1: we All Dilworth is our golden scheduling producer. Susan Hale
Speaker 1: as our guiding light of a managing director. Tig Chafe
Speaker 1: makes us look good as an editor and lead editor.
Speaker 1: Binding the episode together is Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio.
Speaker 1: Nick Thorburn made the theme music And if you stick
Speaker 1: around to the very end, I share a secret. This
Speaker 1: week's is embarrassing, like they often are. But okay. I
Speaker 1: got a red plaid wool kilt at a thrift store
Speaker 1: when I was in high school. I worked all the time,
Speaker 1: even through college, and I remembered I still had it,
Speaker 1: and I unpacked it from a box in the garage
Speaker 1: and I was like, who I miss this thing? Start
Speaker 1: wearing it again, and I realized it literally had not
Speaker 1: been cleaned in decades, I think, even when I got it,
Speaker 1: which is discussed no matter how goth you were at
Speaker 1: the time. And yeah, in college we did have a
Speaker 1: guy named Bug sleeping on our couch. But I soaked
Speaker 1: this kilt last night and a big bowl of oxy
Speaker 1: clean and water. Friends, that water looked like chocolate milk.
Speaker 1: It looked like the chocolate River in willy Wonka. It
Speaker 1: was horrifying, but I loved it, so we're okay. I
Speaker 1: soaked it a couple more times. I washed it delicate
Speaker 1: in the machine. It's air drying now. I'm never getting
Speaker 1: rid of it. We've been through too much. I love
Speaker 1: it too much, but how disgusting. It must feel so
Speaker 1: good right now. I know it does all right for
Speaker 1: my pacadermatology, homeology, y doo, zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, pathology, anthology, cereology, stellatology.
Speaker 2: What's in the basket.