Ask a Medievalist

Ask a Medievalist
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Ask a Medievalist

Everything you always wanted to know about the Middle Ages, but were unable to ask.

  1. 6D AGO

    The Three Hares on the Silk Road

    Synopsis Trade goods weren’t the only things that moved along the Silk Road. Join Em and Jesse as they trace the history of an interesting artistic motif that made it from China all the way to England! Notes 0/ Credit to Hither, Page, by Cat Sebastian, for bringing this topic to my attention. 1/ Previous episodes on trade routes were ep 83 (Old Silk Road, Take Me Home) and 84 (Trans-Saharan Trade). 2/ The Three Hares: this blog (http://www.vikkiyeatesillustration.co.uk/blog/a-brief-explanation-of-the-three-hares-symbol) has many example illustrations! 3/ “Wheel of Dharma, turn turn turn! Tell me the lesson that I must learn!” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharmachakra 4/ According to Wikipedia, among vertebrates, natural parthenogenesis is only reported in lizards, snakes, birds, and sharks. (And maybe amphibians and snakes? Whoever wrote this didn’t do a great job.) It has been artificially induced in pigs and mice. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis) I can’t believe I’m writing a note about this. 5/ Taylor Mac’s piece is A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_24-Decade_History_of_Popular_Music Trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwnddB4dFYk I wish I lived in New York and could just be weird for a living. 6/ Jesse explains why rabbits are not kosher a little oddly—in order to be kosher, a land animal must have cloven hooves and it must chew its cud. Even if rabbits chewed their cud (they don’t), they don’t have hooves. (The weird part of all this is “ergo, they’re rodents and not suitable for consumption.” That part I can’t explain.) 7/ Rabbit starvation? It looks like the general idea is that because rabbit meat is very low fat and high protein, if you eat only that without other fats in your diet, you can intake so much protein you overwhelm your kidneys and they dump bad stuff into your bloodstream. Also called mal de caribou. Charles Darwin mentions this in The Voyage of the Beagle: We were here able to buy some biscuit. I had now been several days without tasting anything besides meat: I did not at all dislike this new regimen; but I felt as if it would only have agreed with me with hard exercise. I have heard that patients in England, when desired to confine themselves exclusively to an animal diet, even with the hope of life before their eyes, have hardly been able to endure it. Yet the Gaucho in the Pampas, for months together, touches nothing but beef. But they eat, I observe, a very large proportion of fat, which is of a less animalized nature; and they particularly dislike dry meat, such as that of the Agouti. Dr. Richardson also, has remarked, “that when people have fed for a long time solely upon lean animal food, the desire for fat becomes so insatiable, that they can consume a large quantity of unmixed and even oily fat without nausea:” this appears to me a curious physiological fact. It is, perhaps, from their meat regimen that the Gauchos, like other carnivorous animals, can abstain long from food. I was told that at Tandeel, some troops voluntarily pursued a party of Indians for three days, without eating or drinking. (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/944/pg944-images.html)

    1h 13m

  2. 12/23/2024

    The Peasants Are (Still) Revolting

    Synopsis In a first for Ask a Medievalist, Em sits down with Sebastian Nothwell to discuss his approach to writing historical/historical fantasy novels. In the process, they get into everything from Victorian steam power to the effects of the peasants revolt of 1381 on the chartists in the 1830s–50s. You can find Sebastian’s website at https://sebastiannothwell.com/. Notes 1/ British Newspaper Archive: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ The Dictionary of Victorian London is also a great place for info. It’s composed largely of clippings from newspapers and books of the time, arranged by topic: https://www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm 2/ Victorian Steam Power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_power_during_the_Industrial_Revolution 3/ The UK shut down the coal plants in September 2024: https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/coal-phaseout-UK/index.html 4/ Buggery Act of 1533 was repealed by the Offenses Against the Person Act of 1837, which nevertheless maintained legal penalties against gay relationships; the last execution for the same was in 1835. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buggery_Act_1533 5/ “Blorbo” means favorite character. 6/ We’ve previously talked about the effects of the plague in episode 2. And we talked a little about the peasant’s revolt in episode 87. 7/ The Chartists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism 8/ A few relevant novels: A Dream of John Ball: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/357 Wat Tyler, or the Rebellion of 1381: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951p007357378&seq=9 Ivanhoe: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/82 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14568 (but there are many, many translations if you look around; we also discussed this in episode 60.) 9/ The Eglinton Tournament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eglinton_Tournament

    53 min

  3. 12/14/2024

    Resistance Is (Not) Futile

    Synopsis “Times are tough, but they could be worse” is the eternal message of our show. This time, we’re talking about persecution and rebellion–how certain groups were oppressed for political purposes in medieval (and early modern, and modern) Europe, and some people and groups who rebelled, in both a personal and more broadly political way. From Boudica to Hrotsvit to Jack Cade, join us to talk about how people in the middle ages took power back from the elites. Notes 1/ Link to Plague episode! 2/ You can tell I’m not a real historian because they would not be allowed to describe the French Revolution as “a messy breakup.” 3/ R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950–1250, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007. 4/ Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, originally published in 1946, translated by George J. Becker and published in English in 1948. The most famous quote from this essay is “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” It’s a little eerie to go to the Goodreads page in search of quotes and see how many people’s reviews (from the 2017–2020 period) say something like “Wow, this feels eerily relevant for what’s going on right now.” [Unfortunately, I think it’s always relevant!–JN] 5/ Bhabha, Homi K., “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” In The Location of Culture. (London: Routledge, 1994), 85–92. 6/ Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2018). 7/ Boudica! (dies 60 CE) See Episode 58, note 11. 8/ Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (973–no later than 1002). Episode 22 is about her! 9/ Margery Kempe (1373–after 1438) was awesome. See Episode 36 note 17 and Episode 70. 10/ St Francis of Assisi (c.1181–1226). We’ve talked about him a lot! There’s more on his stigmata way back in Episode 4! Also, check him out in Episode 23 (on his Christmas pageant). 11/ Peasants’ Revolt (so called) in 1381. Justice, Steven. Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Shakespeare’s version of the Adam/gentleman joke comes from the famous Gravedigger scene in Hamlet V.i: GRAVEDIGGER: There is no ancient gentlemen but gard’ners, ditchers, and grave-makers. They hold up Adam’s profession. [Second Gravedigger]: Was he a gentleman? GRAVEDIGGER: He was the first that ever bore arms. [Second Gravedigger]: Why, he had none. GRAVEDIGGER: What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the scripture? The scripture says Adam digged. Could he dig without arms? 12/ Jack Cade’s Rebellion (1450). Shakespeare again! 2 Henry VI IV.ii: Dick: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. 13/ Florence’s Ciompi Revolt (1378–1382). 14/ a href="https://en.wikipedia.

    1h 27m

  4. 11/27/2024

    Too Many Ramayanas

    Summary The Ramayana is not the oldest story in the world, but it’s definitely in the running. Composed starting in the 700s BCE, it has been carried to all corners of the earth and translated into many languages and cultures, traveling along several distinct lines of migration, yet it remains largely unknown in the west. In honor of Em’s new novel Troth, join Em and Jesse as they discuss the story and its translations. Notes 0/ You can get Em’s new novel here (https://books2read.com/u/mg68Xz)! Or scoop up a signed copy here (https://xanthippe42.itch.io/troth). 1/ Arsene Lupin was created by Maurice Leblanc in 1905, and The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar came out in 1910. According to my notes from the time, the actual thing I was confused by was the combination of the French “la tenure de veleurs” (a velvet wall hanging) that was adjacent to “le manteau de la cheminee” (a mantlepiece) becoming in English, “a velvet chimney-mantel,” which I don’t think is a thing. The book also contained the observation, “La justice obéit souvent à ces entraînements de conviction qui font qu’on oblige les événements à se plier à l’explication première qu’on en a donnée.” meaning “Justice [also law officers, I guess] often obeys the training of its beliefs that one obliges the events to bend to the first explanation that one gave.” Which seems to be still true. 2/ Being so long, the text is thought to have been composed over a long period. It is thought that the earliest parts were composed no earlier than about 750 BCE, and the later parts could have been written as recently as the 3rd century CE. 3/ Some non-academic sources of info about partition: Ms. Marvel (Disney+ show, episode 5), Dr. Who (Series 11, episode 6), Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. 4/ For more on the “300 Ramayanas” controversy, see “Censoring the Ramayana,” Vinay Dharwadker, PMLA 127.3 (May 2012), pp. 433–450. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2012.127.3.433 5/ Earliest manuscript: 6th century BCE (See this article.) Prior to its discovery in 2015, the earliest manuscript was assumed to be from the 4th century BCE, attributed to Valmiki (the putative author of the Ramayana). 6/ Valmiki: the traditional author of the Ramayana. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valmiki 7/ A summary of the story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana#Synopsis 8/ Shakuntala: episode 15 9/ The quote Dr. Jesse reads is from “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation” in The Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan (131–160). (Jesse is paraphrasing p. 134.) 10/ Silk Road, if you missed it, was episode 83 “Old Silk Road, Take Me Home.” 11/ Kannada is a Dravidian language spoken in southwestern India. 12/ The Chakri dynasty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakri_dynasty 13/ The Ramakien: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramakien 14/ The Ramayana of Valmiki: The Complete English Translation, edited and translated by Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman. Princeton Library of Asian Translations. Princeton University Press, 2021. 15/ The proto-Indo European root for “cat” is maybe *kat-,

    1h 17m

  5. 11/20/2024

    Rebroadcast: Episode 29: D'you Like Dags?

    In memory of Wrigley Njus-Kirk, The Best Puppy (May 28, 2009–November 18, 2024), we’re reposting our episode on dogs this week! You can check out the original notes here: http://askamedievalist.com/2021/03/26/episode-29-dyou-like-dags/ We’ll be back with regular episodes next week! Until then, give your puppy a pat and keep it medieval!

    1h 6m

  6. 11/01/2024

    It's (not the) End of the World as We Know It

    Synopsis One time, Em got drunk and started texting Jesse about the bronze age collapse. This is the result. Notes 1/ Em studied abroad in Tianjin, China. It was very educational. I learned that black vinegar is good for your health, that there are mushrooms called ear mushrooms (wood ear, but I only recognized one character), and that I can explain that my stretched earlobes didn’t hurt in several languages. Also, some beer has a relatively low amount of alcohol in it, and if you put it in the freezer, it will freeze and the bottles will shatter. (Perhaps I should say I learned that my classmates didn’t know this.) 2/ Books about how the Church was awesome and saved civilization: How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahil. 3/ Spoiler: They finished the restoration of Notre Dame in time for the Olympics. (Unusually for us, we recorded this in July 2024—before Biden dropped out of the race, as you can maybe tell from the tenor of some of the commentary.) 4/ To be honest, if the fall of Rome was a simple story, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire wouldn’t be six volumes long, right? 5/ Ramses II: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_II 6/ The Battle of the Delta article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Delta 7/ The Sea Peoples are a famous…myth? Explanation by modern historians of something they didn’t understand? Both of these things? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples 8/ Mycenaean Greece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greece. We talked about the Mycenaeans in episode 68 note 9 Minoans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization We talked about the Minoans in Episode 2 note 9, episode 68 note 9, and episode 75 notes 12–14. Cyclades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycladic_culture We only talked about Cycladic Culture briefly in episode 2 note 9, but we have an upcoming episode on Cycladic art! 9/ We just talked about the Ever Given and the rights of truckers in episode 84 notes 1 and 3! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ever_Given (What a weird coincidence!) Also, see John Oliver talk about trucks and waiting! (Start at the 5 minute mark.) 10/ Actually, to the point about “a hundred years ago, if it rained too much, maybe they just didn’t have corn”–a hundred years ago, corn was actually such a major part of the American diet that pellagra was considered an epidemic! This is because corn does not contain vitamin B3 (niacin), and people in poor, rural areas and institutions ate a largely corn-based diet, since it was cheap compared to other things. It was in about 1926 that Dr. Joseph Goldberger established that adding brewer’s yeast to these diets would prevent pellagra. (Interestingly, the nixtamalization of maize, a traditional process that involves soaking the grain in limewater, introduces niacin!) 10/ Linear A https://en.wikipedia.

    1h 12m

  7. 10/22/2024

    Trans-Saharan Trade

    Synopsis We talked about trade moving across Asia and into Europe, but what about trade going North–South? Like the Silk Road, there was a lot of Trans-Saharan trade going back a long time. Goods like salt, ivory, gold, beads, and metal goods–as well as enslaved people–crossed hostile conditions to travel from as far south as Ghana and Mali to northern Africa and the Middle East, and from there into Europe. Join Em and Jesse as they discuss these lesser-known but incredibly interesting routes. Notes 1/ The Ever Given: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ever_Given (yeah, we recorded this a while ago). 2/ Ducks: The Friendly Floatees Spill! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_Floatees_spill  3/ John Oliver talks about trucks and waiting! (Start at the 5 minute mark.) 4/ Sacha Baron Cohen turned out to be a terrible person. Surprising? Not really. 5/ Nintendo was originally founded in 1889. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo  6/ Cannabis discovered in Chinese tombs 7/ Chinese coins in England!  8/ Shoshonean Prayerstone Hypothesis  9/ History of the De Beers Corp: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~lcabral/teaching/debeers3.pdf 10/ History of diamond advertising: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/ 11/ Somehow over the past two years since we recorded this, the salt/salary thing turned into a throwaway line in Em’s new novel Troth. Never say I don’t learn nothin’ from this.

    1h 23m

  8. 09/20/2024

    Old Silk Road, Take Me Home

    Synopsis The Silk Road spanned four thousand years and lasted for centuries–it’s hard to think of anything comparable in scale. From the second century BCE until the mid-15th century, jade, silk, tea, horses, the plague, and more flowed across the Eurasian continent. Join Em and Jesse as they talk about it–and also about Route 66, the origin of the word “tea,” Mongolian horses, and other questionably relevant things. Notes 1/ Route 66 celebrates its centennial in 2026! https://www.route66-centennial.com/ The google doodle was April 30, 2022: https://doodles.google/doodle/celebrating-route-66/ It recognized the day in 1926 that the designation “U.S. 66” was proposed for the route. 2/ Tom Robbins did write a book called Another Roadside Attraction, but the family of clowns was in Villa Incognito. I refuse to link to those books on Wikipedia. You cannot read a summary of a Tom Robbins novel; they must be experienced. 3/ The Green Book: https://www.loc.gov/item/2016298176/ It was inspired by The Jewish Vacation Guide, a book published in 1917 that did a similar thing—list places where road-tripping Jews would be welcome. The LOC site suggests that after the Civil Rights act of 1964 passed, the kinds of discrimination the book helped people avoid stopped happening and so the guide stopped being published. But I’ve talked to Jews who went on motorcycle road trips across the country and stopped at various establishments in the south in the late 70s and felt they were, in modern parlance, extremely sus, vibes are off, etc. So, like, sundown towns maybe went away but the people’s attitudes did not change as quickly. 4/ It was Turkmenistan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9QYu8LtH2E The mention of Azerbaijan on Last Week Tonight. 5/ Bongbong Marcos was elected in 2022. We taped this one a while ago. 6/ Podcast episode on textiles: Episode 33 (on women artisans and textiles), Episode 54 note 15 (on the Bayeux Tapestry), and Episode 62 on tapestries. 7/ Mongolian horses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_horse They live outdoors in temps that get down to -40 degrees. There are more horses than people in Mongolia right now. In trying to source the cheese-making story, I have learned that horse’s milk cannot be made into cheese, because the lactose level is too high! So it’s probably not cheese that was made that way, but fermented mare’s milk—airag—which needs to be churned while it’s fermenting. 8/ Famously, people call it “chai” if it arrived in their country by land (for example, India, most of peninsular SE Asia, Russia, Japan) and “tea” if it arrived by boat (e.g., England and all of their colonies). Both of these words come ultimately from the Chinese “tu”, which became “cha” in Mandarin but “ta” and “te” in Min, a group of Chinese languages spoken in Fujian province and Taiwan (among other areas—there are over 70 million speakers! And you’ve never heard of it!) https://en.wikipedia.

    1h 20m
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About

Everything you always wanted to know about the Middle Ages, but were unable to ask.

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  • Creator
    Ask a Medievalist
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2025
  • Episodes
    89
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © E.H. Lupton and Jesse Njus 2020-2022
  • Show Website
    Ask a Medievalist

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