February 2012
202 posts
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The Pilgrim Healed of Dragon's Bane
A man from Valencia was travelling alone on pilgrimage to Salas.
In a forest, he was overcome by darkness and he lost his way.
He saw a strange beast, in the shape of a dragon, coming towards him. He did not run away for fear that the beast would overtake him.
He prayed to the Virgin and struck it with his sword. He cut the beast in half, splitting its heart in two. However, poison...
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The Oxford Cantigas de Santa Maria Database →
Click on the header of any column to make it scrollable, or to reverse the listing order. Select a poem number or a word from incipit or refrain to go directly to individual poems. Click on the title of any poem to view information on the text and narrative. Click on the poem number to see the latest version of the critical text of the poem (if available). Click on the link below to access...
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Cantiga Translations
Q. Where… are the translations? A.
For a brief narrative summary in English of most of the Cantigas, you can now consult the Oxford CSM Database: just click on a cantiga in the Poems tab and you’ll find the summary there, along with other useful information, although not the full original text. As of September 2011, however, there seem to be no summaries of the Cantigas de Loor...
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Pronunciation guide for medieval... →
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Cantiga words and music
Clearly, the musical notation is not modern: it is made up of neumes, each one of which represents either a single musical note, in the case of and and , or a ligature of multiple notes in all other cases, here including and and , though there are many others. When transcribing the music into modern notation, the convention is to show the ligatures as slurred note groups. Knowing this, we...
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Cantigas de Santa Maria for Singers →
This website presents a complete edition of the full text of the 13th century Cantigas de Santa Maria, specially prepared with the needs of singers and other vocal performers in mind.
In these pages you will find:
the lyrics of all 427 cantigas, with syllables marked for fitting to the music, accompanied by phonetic transcriptions, my own editorial footnotes and links to manuscript...
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The Cantigas de Santa Maria: All Color Images →
13th century
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What is a cantiga?
The term “cantiga” simply means a Spanish medieval lyric, something which survives in quantity, in numerous genres distinguished by the type of narrative. However, most cantigas survive as text only, making the present collection nearly unique for its music. Moreover, it is one of the largest collections of monophonic vernacular music from the middle ages, and of particular value...
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The Cantigas de Santa Maria: Facsimiles →
The Cantigas de Santa Maria medieval-era manuscripts were written during the reign of Alfonso X “El Sabio” (1221-1284) and are one of the largest collections of monophonic (solo) songs from the middle ages.
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The Myth of the Eight-Hour Sleep
A doctor’s manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day’s labour but “after the first sleep”, when “they have more enjoyment” and “do it better”.
From the BBC
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The Myth of the Eight-Hour Sleep →
We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
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This has so made my day! Y’all are the best!
That’s probably enough for now, don’t you think? :) Hope you enjoyed the posts!
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Medieval and Renaissance Material Culture: Card... →
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The pack of cards by the South German Engraver,... →
During the second half of the fifteenth century, with printing technology commercially established and playing cards already a mass-produced commodity, a succession of masterly German engravers practised their art and decorative playing cards reached a zenith.
The South German Engraver was one such craftsman who produced an elaborate, Gothic Spanish-suited pack of playing cards which ...
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Part of an uncut sheet of playing cards →
This playing-card is part of a larger sheet printed also with three images of the Knave of Diamonds and three images of the Knaves of Hearts. It was cheaper for playing-card makers to print several cards on one sheet of paper, colour them through a stencil and then cut the sheet up into individual cards, than to print and colour cards individually. Although over 500 years old, this card is...
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Set of Fifty-Two Playing Cards, ca. 1475 South... →
The Cloisters playing cards constitute the only known complete fifteenth-century illuminated set. Fifty-two cards in all, the set comprises four suits, each with a king, queen, knave, and number cards from 1 through 10. The suit designations pertain to equipment of the hunt: dog collars, tethers, gaming nooses, and hunting horns. The collars and horns are red and the tethers and nooses are...
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The Ambras Court Hunting pack, c.1445 →
The Ambraser Hofjagdspiel, c.1440/45, is attributed to Konrad Witz and his workshop in Basle. It was found in a collection at the castle of Ambras (Innsbruck, Austria) in the 16th century, hence its name ‘The Court Hunting pack of Ambras’. The pack originally consisted of fifty-six cards in four suits, and the suit symbols are lures, herons, hounds & falcons… which all relate to...
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The Master of the Playing Cards, c.1455-60 →
These are so gorgeous, wow.
Animal suited playing cards, copper-engraved and uncoloured, by the “Master of the Playing Cards”, Germany, c.1455-60, possibly intended as models for use in workshops but also used for play.
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The Painted Stuttgart cards, c.1430 →
These cards are so gorgeous! Check them out, you won’t be sorry.
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Three 15th Century Playing Cards →
Description Three court playing-cards with French suit-marks. The cards are the knave and queen of hearts and the king of clubs. Hand-coloured woodcut Backs plain Circa 1425-1450 Dimensions Height: 100 millimetres Width: 65 millimetres
Acquisition date 1956
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Visconti Tarot →
15th Century tarot cards
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Early XV Century Playing Cards →
Above: fifteen cards from a primitive Latin suited pack, possibly of Swiss or German origin for export to Spain, dated by paper analysis as “early XV century”, which makes this one of the earliest known surviving packs of playing cards. There are Moorish influences in some of the cards: see the double-panelled Saracenic shield on the cavalier of swords (middle row).
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Medieval Chess Pieces →
These pieces are from medieval times - 800 A.D. to 1200 A.D. for most of these items.
Click on any of the photos below for more detailed information on each item.
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International Playing Card Society →
The earliest authentic references to playing-cards in Europe date from 1377, but, despite their long history, it is only in recent decades that clues about their origins have begun to be understood. Cards must have been invented in China, where paper was invented. Even today some of the packs used in China have suits of coins and strings of coins - which Mah Jong players know as circles and...
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Playing Card Glossary →
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Tarot Cards ... →
The 78-card deck generally known as “tarot” has been one of the first kinds of playing cards to be manufactured in Western countries, and the very first one made in Italy. This statement is based on a certain number of written sources dating back to the late Middle Ages: such documents provide the description of games played by those days, first mentioning cards as a pastime played...
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Tarot and Hunting Decks
According to written records, Italy is the western country where tarot cards were first made, in the first half of the 1400s, but Spain is the country where the common non-tarot cards first appeared, some 50 years earlier. The relation between these two kinds of decks may be explained by the present theory, according to which the Mamlûk cards were taken into Spain and Italy sometime during the...
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Western Playing Cards
It has been suggested that playing cards were born in China, sometime around the 10th century AD. They were likely domino cards, i.e. the ones that represent a throw of two dice, very similar to the ones still used today in the Far East, and just slightly different from common domino tiles now used in many countries. A few centuries later, playing cards were in use by the Arabs, and soon after...
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Great Chess
Alphonso’s Book of Games (13th century) explains how to play Great Chess:
Book of Large Games Great Game of Chess (Played on a 12 x 12 board F81R: Text only page
“The game of Great Chess that was made in India after the manner of how the Old Kings used to make their armies of knights and pawns and stand them in ranks to show their power and so that their enemies would fear...
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Eight Sided Dice
Alphonso’s Book of Games includes a section on “Great Chess,” which seems to be chess played on a huge board (but also with dice?). Alphonso ordered larger dice to make the game go faster:
(F83R) Used for the “Great Chess”
“Because this Great Chess is very slow and long to play, We, King Alfonso, ordered dice to be made to speed its play and which show their...
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