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Psalters and Psalms

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Heroes, Literary History, Military History

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Easter Sepulchre, Irnham, King David, King John, Lincolnshire, Luttrell Psalter, Magna Carta, Medieval, Middle-earth, Nottingham, psalter, Robin Hood, Scriptorium, Sir Geoffrey Psalter, St Andrew's, Tolkien, Utrecht Psalter, Westminster Psalter

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In past posts, we’ve occasionally used images from a very famous medieval manuscript, the Luttrell Psalter.  One fairly recent one, on carts and wagons in Middle-earth, included this, for example—

image1a.jpg

A medieval psalter is a collection of psalms—religious poems which were traditionally attributed to King David of Israel–

image1david.jpg

(This is, in fact, from the Westminster Psalter, c.1200)

plus other Christian religious material.  It was clearly a place which offered lots of opportunities for illustrations because a number of them have them, some of them very generous in just how many, like the Utrecht Psalter, from the 9th century, which has an illustration for every psalm.

image2utrecht.jpg

The Utrecht Psalter has been digitized—here’s a LINK so that you can see all of this wonderful book.

Such books were created in the medieval equivalent of copy-centers, called scriptoria (singular = scriptorium).  For many years, it was said that this was a specific room in a monastery in which teams of monks worked on writing/copying books.  More recently, this view has been challenged (see this LINK for discussion on the subject), but certainly monks made and copied books, as this manuscript illustration of the 12th-century English priest and Latin poet, Lawrence of Durham reminds us.  In fact, this illustration may be more accurate than other medieval illustrations as it shows Lawrence working on a single sheet, which was the standard method.  All sheets were then gathered up and bound into a book—a very different scene from this Spanish medieval illustration, in which at least the monk on the right seems to be writing in a book (the figure on the left looks to be a lay person and may be painting—hence, illustrating).

image3larryofd.jpg

scriptorium-2echternach.jpg

Illustrated books—especially heavily-illustrated books like the Luttrell Psalter—would have been very costly, and so only the wealthy would have commissioned such a work.  We know the name of the person who commissioned this book because that name and a suggestion of a portrait are at Psalm 109 of the manuscript.

image4sirgeoff.jpg

As it says just above the illustration:  “DNS Galfridus Louterrell me fieri fecit” = The Lord Geoffrey Luttrell had me made”.

Sir Geoffrey (1276-1345) was descended from an earlier Sir Geoffrey, who had been a supporter of King John (1166-1216), the dodgy character of the Magna Carta and from the Robin Hood story.

image5kingjohn.jpg

image6princej.jpg

Here’s King John forced to sign the Magna Carta, designed to lessen the king’s power and increase that of the nobles—

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which, of course, he didn’t do, since the sign of royal approval in 1215 wasn’t a name, but an official seal.

image8magnacarta.jpeg

Sir Geoffrey’s descendant, also Geoffrey, held land, among other places, around Irnham (probably from the Old English for “Georna’s settlement”, Geornaham) in Lincolnshire (yes, when it comes to England, we can never quite escape the Shire, can we?).  Here’s where Lincolnshire is on a map of England.  (It’s interesting that Nottingham, notorious for its sheriff and Prince John in the Robin Hood stories, is only about 40 miles west of Irnham.)

image9lincolnshire.png

This Sir Geoffrey’s manor house has long disappeared, but we imagine that the area called a manor might have looked something like this.

image10manor.jpg

Its church, St Andrew’s, survives, however, and, though rebuilt in 1858, dates from the 12th century.

image11stas.jpg

Inside, is a monumental brass for Sir Geoffrey’s son, Andrew, (died 1390).

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There is no tomb for his father, Sir Geoffrey, but there is what’s called an “Easter Sepulchre”, which was commissioned by him and which may have been based upon such a tomb.

image13eastersepulchre.jpg

This piece of architecture was used in an elaborate ceremony connected with the celebration of the Christian Easter in the Middle Ages.

Beyond the church, our monument to Sir Geoffrey is the psalter, over whose date there has been lots of scholarly discussion, so we’ll go with the general area of dating, c.1320-1340.  The book is about 14.5 inches by 10.5 (368.3mm x 266.7mm) and contains 309 pages made of vellum (fine calfskin), with illustrations on more than 200 pages.  The text was written by a single scribe, it is thought, but at least five artists were involved in the illustrating—and what illustrations!

In fact, it seems a crazy variety, and, unlike the Utrecht Psalter, the illustrations don’t match the psalms.  Instead, the scenes depicted vary from the high religious—like the three Wise Men/Kings/Magi following the star to Bethlehem, from the New Testament

image14magi.jpg

to all sorts of grotesque creatures

image15grotesque.jpg

to what we love most, the agricultural and domestic scenes.

These can show a whole town

image16town.jpg

or mills, both water and wind-drivenimage18mill.jpg

image19windmill.jpgor how the grain is raised and processed to get to the mills

image20aplowing.jpg

image20harrrowing.jpg

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or even controlling the pests who would eat the grain.  (Is this a screencap from the first cat video?)

image23catandmouse.jpg

Here’s a LINK to a selection of images from the British Library, but there are more if you google “Luttrell Psalter”.  See what your favorites might be.

And thanks, as always, for reading!

MTCIDC

CD

 

ps

Let’s add here a LINK to a short film based upon the psalter, which we think you might enjoy.

“Dragons, Other”

21 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Maps

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Arthur Rackham, Beowulf, C.S. Lewis, Chrysophylax, Custard the Dragon, Dragons, Dream Days, Esgaroth, Farmer Giles of Ham, Jabberwock, Jabberwock-slayer, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll, Lonely Mountain, Luttrell Psalter, map, Middle-earth, Narnia, Ogden Nash, Pauline Baynes, Rumer Godden, Smaug, St George, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Dragon of Og, The Hobbit, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, The Lord of the Rings, The Reluctant Dragon, Through the Looking-Glass, Tolkien, Walt Disney

As always, readers, welcome.

One of us is currently teaching a class where our present focus is upon The Hobbit.

image1hob1st.jpg

At the center of the book is the Lonely Mountain and at the center of that is Smaug.

image2aerebor.jpg

image2smaug.jpg

This got us to thinking about other dragons in our experience, and some of those are not quite of the same breed as the hoard-sitter faced by Bilbo and the dwarves.  That dragon is closely related to the Beowulf variety

image3beowulfdragon.jpg

which, unlike Smaug, has neither a name nor (it seems) human speech, but it certainly has the same suspicious streak:  when an escaped slave steals a cup from its hoard, it’s almost immediately aware that it’s missing and suspects a human.

image4stealingcup.jpg

And they are both vengeful.  As Smaug devastates Esgaroth, even if he dies for it,

image5esgaroth.jpg

image6smaug.jpg

so Beowulf’s dragon scorches the countryside in revenge for the theft.

But what about those other dragons?

First, we thought of Kenneth Grahame’s Dream Days (1898),

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a collection of short stories, the next-to-last of which is “The Reluctant Dragon”.

image9reluct.jpg

This is the story of a beast the very opposite of Smaug—no hoard, no suspicion, no flaming violence, and, in fact, a poetry lover.  This story was then converted into a Disney cartoon of 1941.

image10reluct.jpg

Needless to say, although the core of the plot is the same, what makes the Grahame distinctive is the language.  All of the major characters:  the dragon, the little boy who finds him, and St. George, who is brought in as a dragon-slayer, are thoughtful and articulate late Victorians who would rather discuss literature than do battle—a far cry not only from Beowulf’s encounter, but also from every other earlier depiction we could think of.

image11ucellostgeo.jpg

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The sword in this last one looks like it actually belongs in the hands of the jabberwock-slayer

image14jabberwocky.jpg

in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1872).

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Here’s a LINK to Dream Days so that you can enjoy the story for yourselves.

Nearly sixty years later, the comic verse writer, Ogden Nash,

image16nash.jpg

produced not a literary dragon, but a timid one in “Custard the Dragon” (1959).

image17custard.jpg

This is a poem in 15 stanzas and is a story about Belinda and her pets, including a dragon, who is taunted by the other pets as being less than brave.  To underline this, the last line in a number of stanzas is a variation upon the first version of the line, “But Custard cried for a nice safe cage”.  (Here’s a LINK to the poem.)

The surprise is that, when a pirate climbs in through the window (this happens all the time here—possibly they escape from dreams?), Custard promptly eats him—and the cries of “Coward!” disappear immediately.

In contrast to the unnamed dragon in “The Reluctant Dragon” and in “Custard the Dragon”, our next dragon is a talker—like Smaug, but also like Smaug, potentially malevolent.  This is Chrysophylax in JRRT’s 1937/1949 Farmer Giles of Ham.  (JRRT is having a quiet joke here—“Chrysophylax” is Ancient Greek for “Goldguard”.)

image18chrysophylax.jpg

image19afgoh.jpg

The artwork is by Pauline Baynes (1922-2008).

image19pb.jpg

If, like us, you’ve loved the Narnia books, then you know her as their original illustrator.

image20lion.jpg

She was also the artist for an early Middle-earth map.

image21memap.gif

Her 2008 obituary in The Daily Telegraph tells of how they came to work together:

“In 1948 Tolkien was visiting his publishers, George Allen & Unwin, to discuss some disappointing artwork that they had commissioned for his novella Farmer Giles of Ham, when he spotted, lying on a desk, some witty reinterpretations of medieval marginalia from the Luttrell Psalter that greatly appealed to him.  These, it turned out, had been sent to the publishers “on spec”by the then unknown Pauline Baynes.”   (The Daily Telegraph, 8 August, 2008)

JRRT was then so impressed with her work that it appeared both in other later publications and his recommendation led to her being engaged by CS Lewis’ publisher for the Narnia books, as well.  (And here’s a LINK to that obituary, which has more on Tolkien and Baynes, as well as Lewis.)

And the Baynes connection leads us to one further dragon, that in Rumer Godden’s  (1902-1998) 1981 The Dragon of Og, for which Baynes provided the cover art.

image22rg.jpg

image23dragog.jpg

It’s not our practice to discuss work we haven’t read, but we’ve just discovered this novel and have already put it on our spring reading list.  The little we know about it comes from a blurb or two, but it looks promising:  this is more of the reluctant dragon, but one who is in danger of being provoked by a new local lord until his wife steps in and cleverly changes the situation.

Before we close, however, we want to look back for a second at the Tolkien/Baynes connection and add two further things.  First off, here’s the first page of JRRT’s graceful letter of thanks and praise to Baynes for her work in illustrating Farmer Giles.

image24letter.jpg

Second, as the Telegraph obituary says, Tolkien was impressed with her versions of the marginalia from the Luttrell Psalter, which is high on our list of favorite medieval manuscripts.

image25luttrellpsalter.jpg

In our next, we want to spend some time looking at that work, thinking about marginalia, and not only there, but also in the work of another favorite illustrator, Arthur Rackham (1867-1939).

Till then, thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

 

Feudal Array 2

27 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, Fairy Tales and Myths, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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14th century, 15th century, Adventure, Agincourt, Anglo-Saxon, armor, Bayeux Tapestry, feudalism, Fyrd, Gerry Embleton, Huscarl, Luttrell Psalter, Middle-earth, N.C. Wyeth, tapestry, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien

Welcome, as always.

In this posting, we want to conclude what has turned out to be a kind of mini-series on Feudalism in Middle Earth. Two postings ago, we used the 14th-century Luttrell Psalter to illustrate what working the plowland behind the Rammas Echor might have looked like. In our last, we used the Bayeux Tapestry to offer another possible visual influence on Tolkien’s depiction of the Rohirrim: the conquering Normans. In this final posting, we will look at the forces of Rohan’s ally, Gondor and will use a number of sources, both medieval and modern.

In the Jackson movies, there is a kind of regularity, from Osgiliath to Minas Tirith in what we are shown.

gondorians.jpg

This is not surprising if the cue for costuming has come primarily from one description:

“The Guards of the gate were robed in black, and their helms were of strange shape, high-crowned, with long cheek-guards close-fitting to the face, and above the cheek-guards were set the white wings of sea-birds; but the helms gleamed with a flame of silver, for they were indeed wrought of mithril, heirlooms from the glory of old days. Upon the black surcoats were embroidered in white a tree blossoming like snow beneath a silver crown and many-pointed stars. This was the livery of the heirs of Elendil, and none wore it now in all Gondor, save the Guards of the Citadel before the Court of the Fountain where the White Tree once had grown.” (The Return of the King, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

We have no wish to criticize—in this respect, at least—the creators of the films for taking what might appear to be an easy out: uniformity being cheaper than individuality, since it’s clear that, when it came to dramatic effects in the films in general, the old theatrical advertising line, “No Expense Was Spared To…” is really true. Instead, we want employ our former method of consulting medieval manuscripts, as well as another passage from the same chapter, to offer another possible view, one which might have influenced the author in his depiction of the defenders of Gondor.

We’ll begin with the passage:

“Leading the line there came walking a big thick-limbed horse, and on it sat a man of wide shoulders and huge girth, but old and grey-bearded, yet mail-clad and black-helmed and bearing a long heavy spear. Behind him marched proudly a dusty line of men, well-armed and bearing great battle-axes; grim-faced they were and shorter and somewhat swarthier than any men that Pippin had yet seen in Gondor…

And so the companies came…The men of Ringlo Vale…from the uplands of Morthond…five hundred bowmen…From the Anfalas…a long line of men of many sorts, hunters and herdsmen and men of little villages, scantily equipped save for the household of Golasgil their lord. From Lamedon, a few grim hillmen…Fisher-folk of the Ethir…Hirluin the Fair…with three hundreds of gallant green-clad men. Imrahil…with gilded banners bearing his token of the Ship and the Silver Swan, and a company of knights in full harness riding grey horses; and behind them seven hundreds of men at arms, tall as lords, grey-eyed, dark-haired, singing as they came.”

There is actually not a lot of detail here, but there are a few hints. First off, there are those “great battle-axes”.   Here are two images from the Bayeux Tapestry of the Anglo-Saxon king, Harold’s, bodyguards, his huscarl, armed with their characteristic long-handled axes.

axemen_bayeux.jpg

And here is a modern reconstruction.

huscarl4.jpg

Next, we have those five hundred bowmen from Morthond. The Tapestry can provide a useful image of those,

archers2.jpg

but perhaps what JRRT really was thinking of were the famous longbowmen of Crecy and Poitiers and Agincourt, whose skill and courage knocked down whole waves of equally brave French knights. Here are a pair of modern images by the brilliant historical illustrator, Gerry Embleton, himself a medieval reenactor.

EnglishLongbowman1330-15151
longbowman2

Besides the huscarl, King Harold’s army was made up of the fyrd, a kind of militia drawn from the freemen of the countryside, who had to provide their own weapons and equipment and were only required to serve for limited periods—they would have been farmers, most of them, after all, and couldn’t be off the farm for too long without threatening their own livelihoods. Perhaps these could suggest that “long line of men of many sorts”. Here’s an image from the Tapestry of what appears to be the fyrd fending off a mounted Norman attack. You’ll notice the lack of defensive armor.

fyrd3.jpg

“gallant, green-clad men” is rather vague, but, suddenly, all we could see is Robin Hood and his Merry Men. And so we can’t resist including some of our favorite N.C. Wyeth illustrations.

rhood1rhood2

And these could easily provide the model for the rangers in South Ithilien, couldn’t they?

faramir.jpg

Last, there is that “company of knights in full harness”. This presents a real problem. Knights from which period? The armor available at the time of the Bayeux Tapestry in the mid-11th century

fyrd3.jpg

and which, we suggested in our last, might be good for the Rohirrim, was very different from that of later times. Here’s the armor of the days of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell,

Sir_Geoffrey_from_LPsalter.jpg

in the early 14th century—

early14thcarmor.jpg

and here’s what the English archers would have faced as worn by their valiant French opponents at Agincourt, in 1415.

early15thcarmor.jpg

This handy chart can give you a diachronic (through-time) view of changes in medieval armor.

02e1c306489f565ee38b56e417ba5ff0.jpg

If we look at something produced through the workshop of William Morris, that strong influence upon JRRT, we find this group of knights from a set of tapestries produced in the 1890s.

Holy_Grail_Tapestry_-The_Arming_and_Departure_of_the_Kniights.jpg

The armor is pretty vague (the systematic study of the history of armor was still in its childhood then—if you’re interested in the early days, google Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick to learn about its first great scholar), but one of the helmets—the one to the far left in the background, looks like a visored sallet, which could date what we see in the tapestry to the later 15th century.

Sallet_helmet,_Southern_Germany,_1480-1490_-_Higgins_Armory_Museum_-_DSC05461.JPG

(Sharp-eyed readers who are Star Wars fans—we are—will recognize this general pattern from the technical people on the Death Star—

deathstarcrewmen.png

We might add that Morris and his friends were strongly influenced by pre-Renaissance and early Renaissance painters, so perhaps this picture, one of a set of 3 by Paolo Uccello from the middle of the 15th century, might also provide a possible model (and we’re glad to show you the whole set because we think that they’re just magical).

Öèôðîâàÿ ðåïðîäóêöèÿ íàõîäèòñÿ â èíòåðíåò-ìóçåå Gallerix.ru

Uccello_Battle_of_San_Romano_Uffizi

 

Taken all together, these produce a very different image from the films, don’t they? Much more individual, often much less well-equipped, more actual medieval, as we would imagine the author had had in mind. So—contrast this

 

with this:

ArmiesOfAgincourt.jpg

Which do you prefer, dear readers?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

 

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