#medievalist problems

[oldshrewsburyian]

Tfw you spend a solid hour trying to follow rabbit trails of research and cross-reference dictionaries to determine the significance of a weirdly placed word... only to figure out that it was the fifteenth-century equivalent of a typo when a city official wrote about the drink he wanted after work instead of the burden placed on the people by a set of legal practices.

[lordsofthemanor]

publicly being a medievalist means everyone on your other social media is always sending you any memes or material ever remotely middle ages-adjacent. It’s touching, but there’s no polite was to tell them you saw it five months prior amongst your own people 

[thatscarletflycatcher]

International Philosophy’s Day is on the third Thursday of November

What probably many people doesn’t know is that the date is related to an older celebration: the catholic feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria (25th November).

So... some people think she didn’t really exist, some think that she is a “christianization” of Hypatia of Alexandria... Anyways, some interesting facts about her as conceived by tradition:

She was a scholar

She had a dispute with 50 philosophers and won

She was one of the 14 Holy Helpers, that is, The Justice League, Catholic Saints Edition™

She is usually represented stepping on the emperor Maxentius

Her attributes are a sword, a book, a spiked wheel and the palm of martyrdom

She is the patron saint of philosophers, mechanics, theologians and spinners.

So, yeah, the patron saint of philosophers and theologians, for catholics, is not some random bishop or monk, not even a nun, a lay woman. I may or may not have a collection of artistic depictions of her because #MedievalistReasons and #MedievalistProblems.

Under the cut. (I’m sorry I don’t have the sources for them)

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

it just took me way too long to figure out that the phrase “AU for 1014″ was referring to the Annals of Ulster entry for 1014 and not an Alternate Universe version of the Battle of Clontarf

[enluminen]

The problem: I don’t actually want to study Anglo Saxon texts, I just want to learn to read Old English because it sounds like magic.

[rhapsodeproductions]

Medievalist problems: I would love to call this game Annals due to it’s focus on the passage of time in a community, but I’m not going to have my passion project be one letter removed from Anal

[coffee-in-wine-glasses]

I love languages so much genuinely I do hate the fact that they take constant maintenance and review feels ridiculous.

I mean what do you mean I have to do at least 100 flash cards of old English vocabulary every day to keep it fresh? What do you mean I have to read Latin daily to remain fluent? Why didn’t anyone tell me how easy it is to forget Norwegian? I spent a whole summer learning old Irish and it was agony and because I didn’t keep it up those books will just sit on my shelf forever???? What the fuck???

[erinaceina]

I want to bite people who don’t include the shelfmarks of the manuscripts they’re talking about in their article.