The Big Wide World Of History Loving

Bumbling through the life of a Master Student, hoping that the dream of learning for a living will never end.

[siobtothehan-blog]

The life of the post-postgrad

So, here I am in, in the adult world. I will not lie to you, it’s certainly been a reality shock. I even pay council tax now, that is not a life I dreamed of. 

However I have very much kept my toes dipping the sea of history, academia and heritage. Very recently I have had some absolutely fabulous experiences, and they have reminded me why adult life isn’t as bad as it can sometimes feel and reminded me even more why I love history so much.

Firstly, this weekend I volunteered at the Royal Armouries conference on 1066, which was based in the Tower of London. The conference in its programme alone sounded exciting enough, with the top scholars on this period giving papers, e.g. David Bates, John Gillingham, Edward Impey etc etc. However there was so much more to experience than this. With our passes giving us free access into the Tower of London, both before and after visitors were allowed in, I experienced the Tower in the way I never thought I would have the opportunity. 

This was the view of the White Tower whilst I was in my greeting position, sans tourists! Quite a treat, if I do say so myself. 

The papers that were given were fascinating, particularly with this being a period I have studied briefly. However to see the current historiographical debates and new research being presented, it was truly eyeopening. As volunteers, we had the opportunity to take short breaks which allowed us to use our passes to tourist our way around the Tower. Our adventures included being the first to see the Crown Jewels on the Sunday morning. 

The Saturday concluded with the drinks reception in the White Tower. This involved free-flowing prosecco and a tour of the Chapel. The highlight for me personally was meeting the Master of Ravens! It was a truly amazing weekend, which ended with this fantastical view of the Tower on our way back to the tube station. 

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, I’m also an active member of the Student Panel at the Museum of English Rural Life. Our role of designing the Social Learning Space has now come to a close, with the Museum reopening to the public on the 22nd September! I’m attending the VIP opening on Tuesday, and I am unbelievably excited to see the finished product, and see how it has all come together after all the work of the Museum staff. The new website in itself is brilliant!

Finally, and probably most importantly, I have officially finished my Masters degree! I am now tentatively awaiting the results, but it is not too long away. To celebrate my dissertation hand in, I went to Madrid for two weeks. This was an amazing break to an amazing city. I recommend to Madrid to anyone ever in the whole world. We also took a day trip to Toledo for one day, and I have to say it may be one of my favourites cities that I have seen so far. The medieval nature and the rich history was fascinating and still so visible. The prominence of the Cathedral was incredible, and so rich in history. 

So I mean, for now, I’m keeping busy. History will forever be such a large part of my life, and it is bizarre that at the moment it is almost a hobby which I do in my days off, where as it has consumed my every moment the last four years at least. I look forward to beginning the PhD application process and continuing with all these wonderful experiences! 

Adios amigos! 

[catharcountry]

Lastours, Aude, Occitanie, France.

www.catharcountry.info/tour__lastours.htm

An unusual arrangement of three Cathar Castle towers (In Occitan, Las Tors, The Towers). These fortifications belonged to the Lords of Cabaret, who held it in fief from the Trencavels.

In the thirteenth century there were three towers here, built on the same rocky outcrop.  They are called Cabaret (to the north), Quertinheux and Surdespine (to the south).

The Seigneurs of Cabaret received troubadours here, including Raymond de Miraval and Peire Vidal, who dedicated verses to the Cathar Ladies of the place. During the Cathar Crusade this was one of the most ardent centres of resistance to the French Crusaders,

[siobtothehan-blog]

Tumblr I am back

Hola amigos! So although I took a very very veery short break from tumblr (like a casual 8 months) I am back and more historical than ever! Who knew I could even manage that?! Jokes we definitely all knew otherwise what is the aim of doing a Masters? So here we are, mid August and I have sent off my full dissertation draft to my tutor and so am anxiously waiting until Monday to receive feedback about it. So naturally I'm attempting to do anything to keep my mind off the potential impending doom. Such activities have included; running; eating 10 chocolate bars; reading the new HP; eating 20 million cookies; lying in bed and of course eating everything in the house. However Dissertation Doomsday is fast approaching so I just need to get on with it and distract myself more with history, because really that's all I've ever known how to do successfully. So I am sure the whole of tumblr has missed my waffle about history's so no fears I have 8 months of waffling to catch up on! I have already posted a few cheeky snaps I have taken in the last couple of months of some beautifully historical places I have had the opportunity to visit. Oxford and Bath will never fail to leave me awestruck, particularly on such beautifully sunny days as I managed to go. However really my summer has not been overrun by beautiful skies and fabulous buildings, it has consisted of me sitting inside reading, transcribing, translating and writing. This has been absolutely fascinating. Working so closely with the Bibles moralisées has been an honour, and I would give anything to see the real manuscripts rather than continuing my work with the facsimiles. Hopefully once I continue my studies within a PHD I will be allowed such access. The results of my dissertation have been extremely surprising in their questioning of the established thought surrounding the influence of Hugh of St Cher upon the production of the two later Bibles moralisées. Although this is fantastic, it does firmly position my dissertation as a challenge to previous research and a prominent call for more. Something I was certainly not expecting but certainly setting me on the perfect path for a career following this research. Plus we all now how much of a great time the illuminations are in the Bibles, and I cannot stress just how much better the ones are in the Book of Revelations. Also thank god I had a basic knowledge of the apocalypse thanks to Supernatural - I owe you one fellas. I have little else to say now, I just want to watch more Supernatural, so eeeeeeer see ya.

[siobtothehan-blog]

Just one reason I love the campus of the University of Reading and am determined to remain there forever.

[siobtothehan-blog]

University Church in Oxford, moments away from the Bodleian Library

[siobtothehan-blog]

Bath Abbey looking majestic in the sunshine

[vauxhallandi]

Theresa May is not a feminist. Margaret Thatcher was not a feminist. Heartbreaking though it is, Conservative victories will never be victories for feminism, so please, please stop portraying them as such if you care at all about poor women, disabled women, women of colour, female immigrants, women seeking abortions, single mothers, LGBT women, abused women, chronically ill women, female carers, and every other woman who doesn’t look and live like the Tories do.

[wishes-inthedark]

Ceiling of the chamber where the Harry Potter hospital scenes were filmed at.

Bodleian library, University of Oxford March 2016.

[catharcountry]

Cathédrale Saint-Nazaire-et-Saint-Celse, Béziers, France.

www.catharcountry.info

Béziers was the first target of the war against the Cathars (the “Albigensian Crusade”) in 1209. According to the Cistercian abbot in command, reporting to the pope after the siege of Béziers, 20,000 were killed here without regard to age, sex, or rank. Another Church source reports that 7,000 of them were burned alive in the high church during the massacre. Another reports the abbot as giving the famous instruction “kill them all, God will know his own”. The massacre was celebrated as miraculous and attributable to divine vengeance.

The present structure here dates from the thirteenth century and was erected on the site of the cathedral destroyed during the mass burning in 1209.

[huntingtonlibrary]

(Something went haywire when we posted this earlier, so we’re posting again now.)

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day! For the occasion, we’ve GIFed the earliest known image of the saint, in which he has accidentally run his staff through the High King’s foot.

This fantastic little portrait comes from a 13th-century manuscript in our collections. Read more about it—and see the pre-GIF version—over on Verso, our blog.

[huntingtonlibrary]

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, which seems like a great excuse to send this gif around again.

[catharcountry]

#OnThisDay 16 March 1244: Some 225 Cathars were burned alive at Montségur, a castle in the foothills of the Pyrenees, for the crime of not being Catholic.

www.catharcountry.info

A garrison of around 200 Cathar sympathizers had defended the Cathar Perfects for 10 months against a French Crusader army of 7,000 - 10,000 before they surrendered. The Perfects were given the chance to save their lives by renouncing their faith, but none did (In fact around 25 people became Perfects AFTER the offer was made). A monument on the site reads

EN CE LIEU LE 16 MARS 1244 PLUS DE 200 PERSONNES ONT ÉTÉ BRULÉES. ELLES N’AVAIENT PAS VOULU RENIER LEUR FOI.

roughly:

IN THIS PLACE ON 16th MARCH 1244 MORE THAN 200 PEOPLE WERE BURNED. THEY WOULD NOT ABJURE THEIR FAITH

A contemporary Church chronicler preened that the “heretics” passed directly from the flames of this world to the flames of the next.

[emilymeowww-blog1]

i’ve got 99 problems and being a decaying organism that’s born to die in a society run by money that i can’t escape is one of them 

[catharcountry]

Cité de Carcassonne, Carcassonne, Languedoc, France.

http://www.catharcountry.info/

The Castrum of Raymond Roger Trencavel, Viscount of Carcassonne, Béziers, Albi and the Razès. He died in his own prison here in 1209, aged 24, after being taken prisoner while under a safe-conduct from the Cistercian Abbot Arnaud Amaury the papal legate and military leader of the Albigensian Crusade who was besieging Carcassonne (and who then appointed Simon de Montfort as military leader of the crusade).

Castrum = Cité + Château Comtal

UNESCO World Heritage Site

[bodleianlibs]

Harry Potter in the Bodleian

While the Bodleian Library may have been around since 1602, the majority of people around the world probably know it better as the Hogwarts Library. Or, more specifically, the Restricted Section.

The Hogwarts Restricted Section is actually the Arts End of the medieval Duke Humfrey’s Library, the oldest reading room at the University of Oxford. In The Philosopher’s Stone students require a note to consult books in this section, just like they do at the Bodleian; readers have been swearing Bodley’s oath for centuries. This is what the section actually looks like:

In the films Harry browses a shelf of books chained to their shelves, the reason for which is made clear when the one Harry picks up starts screaming. 

Well, we actually used to chain our books to the shelves. This is because the Bodleian is a non-lending library and the only way we could stop our readers nicking all of our precious books was to chain them up. While we now have an electronic alarm system, we still have one book chained as it was:

..and nowadays we rely on polite notes rather than demoniacally possessed books..

(These books are alarmed as they’re the original books that have been in Duke Humfrey’s Library for centuries. Readers can request them, they just  can’t get them off the shelf themselves.)

[ccgwrites]

To see Jane Austen’s writing desk, you have to go to the British Library in London. It’s in a glass case in their Treasures of the British Library display, across from one of Shakespeare’s folios and a few cases away from some Beatles sheet music. It is a very small desk, and foldable, designed to be easily stowed away, which it must have been often; Austen wrote in her parlor and would hide her writing whenever callers stopped by. At the British Library it is open, with very small spectacles pinned to one corner and the tiny notebook that held the first draft of Persuasion lying on top of it, splayed flat so you can see Austen’s fine, precise handwriting. Under the shadow of that desk, the disciplined confinement of her novels acquires visceral force. This much space was she permitted, and no more. In the display case next to Austen’s desk is Dickens’s first draft of Nicholas Nickelby, in a notebook that dwarfs Austen’s entire desk, with generous margins and looping, scrawly handwriting. It is impossible for me to imagine what Austen might have done with that kind of freedom, that kind of certainty of her own right to take up space.

The Real Mr. Darcy (via msfehrwight)

[em-ily-grace-deactivated2020072]

Two Medieval Monks Invent Bestiaries

By Mallory Ortberg on The Toast

MONK #1: do birds have meetings MONK #2: absolutely they have a Meeting Hat and everything MONK #1: what do they have meetings about MONK #2: mostly who gets to wear the meeting hat

MONK #1: do human women sleep in beds or– MONK #2: no that’s dogs you’re thinking of MONK #1: right right

MONK #1: what part of the knight do fish go on MONK #2: the head MONK #1: thanks MONK #2: oh absolutely no problem at all MONK #1: both lying flatwise across the head, or…? MONK #2: no one on each side like ears MONK #1: ok great

MONK #1: so when a dog and a bird make out MONK #2: right MONK #1: it’s usually the bird that’s on top right? MONK #2: yeah usually MONK #1: great

MONK #1: hey is it owls or people that live in caves and build fires? MONK #2: owls

MONK #1: hey roughly what size are sparrows MONK #2: mm it kind of depends MONK #1: like AS big as a tree or not quite as big as a tree? MONK #2: oh pretty much the same size as a tree

MONK #1: can cows sail boats? MONK #2: hahaha no common misconception they have to put wheels on the boat and roll it over land

MONK #1: what do birds eat MONK #2: other birds mostly MONK #1: like different kinds of birds, or something else MONK #2: no birds only eat exactly the same kind of birds that they are

MONK #1: what kind of bird tucks people into bed at night usually I mean MONK #2: any bird any kind of walking bird MONK #1: and when it tucks you in, people usually look… MONK #2: incredibly worried it’s incredibly worrying when the bedbird tucks you in

MONK #1: ugh sorry to bother you again MONK #2: no no its fine this is what i’m here for what is it MONK #1: what part of a goat is a snail again like the front end or the back end MONK #2: what part do you feel like should be the snail part MONK #1: the back part? MONK #2: you shouldnt doubt yourself you know more about goats than you give yourself credit for

MONK #1: what usually rides horses like people or– MONK #2: fire

[effington]

Tbh this is the funniest post on this dumb website

[qrsive]

I’m sorry but I have never laughed so hard sitting alone in a room

[nothing-tra-lala]

@siobtothehan

[bodleianlibs]

Treasure Tuesday: Magna Carta

Magna Carta is one of the most powerful symbols of liberty, rights and justice. Agreed by King John at Runnymede in 1215, the document curtailed the power of the king and was revised and reissued over the next 80 years by or for successive monarchs. Most importantly, it enshrined the right to a fair trial and protection from arbitrary imprisonment.

The Bodleian has four of the seventeen surviving pre-1300 ‘engrossments’ of Magna Carta, three of which date from 1217 and one from 1225. The engrossments of 1217 were issued in the name of the boy king Henry III and bear the seals of his guardians William Marshal and the papal legate Cardinal Guala.

Every Tuesday we’re sharing a ‘treasure’ from the collections of the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, the largest university library system in the United Kingdom. Check back every week to discover what’s in our world famous collections!