Lady Madge Shelton

1531...Noble first cousin of Mary, George and Anne Boleyn, Lady of Honour, Pureblood, Editor/Poetess Devonshire MS, Mistress of King Henry VIII. RP18+

[Lady Madge Shelton @_MadgeShelton]

@MelGibsonxvyv Looks like a rubber change purse, actually.

[Lady Madge Shelton @_MadgeShelton]

@Warcraft ONE it is, then. Definitely 1

[Lady Madge Shelton @_MadgeShelton]

@Faithful2Pray A --In sooth, it is most true.

[MotherMary @Mothermary0012]

Dios te salve, María, 
llena eres de gracia;
el Señor es contigo.
Bendita Tú eres 
entre todas las mujeres,
y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús. 

Santa María, Madre de Dios,
ruega por nosotros, pecadores,
ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amén

[Lady Madge Shelton @_MadgeShelton]

@Mercy4Hire Beautiful!

[Catholic Quotes @CatholicQuote12]

Dios te salve, María, 
llena eres de gracia;
el Señor es contigo.
Bendita Tú eres 
entre todas las mujeres,
y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús. 

Santa María, Madre de Dios,
ruega por nosotros, pecadores,
ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amén

[Magister Iācōbus @latinedisce]

Vanitas vanitatum — “Vanity of vanities.”

[ArchaeoHistories @histories_arch]

Before the chocolate eggs and the pastel baskets, the medieval rabbit was something else entirely. Flip through enough 13th-14th Century illuminated manuscripts held in British Library and Bibliothèque de Verdun, and you will find something deeply strange in the margins. Rabbits. Enormous, furious, heavily armed rabbits. Rabbits wielding axes at kings. Rabbits laying siege to castles. Rabbits shooting hunters in the spine with bows and arrows, tying them up, hauling them before a rabbit judge, receiving a guilty verdict, and joyfully beheading them. Rabbits roasting hunters over open fires and boiling their hounds. One rabbit, in the Smithfield Decretals illuminated in London in the 1340s, presides over an entire multi-page revenge sequence that unfolds like a comic strip across the manuscript margins. It is extraordinarily violent, meticulously illustrated, and clearly someone's idea of a very good joke.

These images are called drolleries, and they belong to a tradition that peaked between 1250 and the 15th century, drawn in the margins of serious religious texts by the monks copying them. The concept is called le monde renversé, the world turned upside down. Medieval artists loved depicting reality in reverse, hunters being hunted, prey becoming predator, the powerful made powerless. Rabbits, being the most docile and frequently eaten animals in the medieval world, were the perfect candidates for this role reversal. In real life they were on the menu at every feast and hunted daily with dogs and arrows. In the margins of manuscripts they got their revenge in spectacular and extremely graphic fashion. The earliest known killer rabbit, found in the Arnstein Passional from around 1170, shows two rabbits who have hanged a human hunter and are standing on their hind legs pointing and jeering at the body.

Not everyone found this funny. The Cistercian monk Bernard of Clairvaux complained about the drolleries in terms that feel remarkably modern, asking what these ridiculous monstrosities were doing in the cloisters and what purpose was served by such unclean monkeys, fierce lions, and monstrous centaurs. He also noted, with some irritation, that even if the foolishness caused no shame, one might at least balk at the expense. He had a point. These books were extraordinarily costly to produce. Someone was spending serious money on manuscripts decorated with rabbits committing war crimes.

For several hundred years the medieval version of the Easter rabbit was carrying an axe, had an outstanding grievance against humanity, and was depicted in the margins of the most sacred books in Christendom getting extremely satisfying revenge. The Monty Python killer bunny was not just an invention; it was a history lesson....

© Eats History

#archaeohistories

[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

In 1106 AD; Germany, a family makes a choice that seals their daughter's fate before she's old enough to understand it....

She's eight years old. They send her to a Benedictine monastery, not for schooling, not for a season. Forever. She's an oblate, a living gift to God. Her childhood ends the day she arrives.

Her name is Hildegard, and she should have disappeared into history like countless others.

But something else is happening inside her mind. Visions. Blinding, celestial floods of light and imagery that she can't control and barely comprehends. She calls them "the living light." They're so strange, so overwhelming, she tells almost no one. For thirty years, she keeps this secret locked inside, unsure if it's divine, if it's madness, or if anyone would ever take her seriously.

Then at forty, everything changes. She hears a command she can't ignore. Write it down. All of it.

So she does.

What emerges is breathtaking. Scivias, a theological epic bursting with symbolic visions of creation and salvation, unlike anything her era had seen. Medical texts cataloging hundreds of plants, stones, and treatments with a precision that wouldn't be matched for centuries. Seventy original compositions of sacred music, so hauntingly unusual she's now recognized as one of the first named female composers in the West.

But Hildegard doesn't stop at writing. She founds two monasteries. She writes to emperors, popes, kings, not with deference, but with authority. She corrects them. Challenges them. She preaches in public, breaking every rule that says a woman has no right to speak. She becomes a prophet, a healer, an intellectual force that even the most powerful men in Europe can't dismiss.

And then the world forgets her. For eight hundred years, her name fades into footnotes.

It takes until 2012 for the Catholic Church to finally canonize Hildegard of Bingen and name her a Doctor of the Church, one of only four women ever given that honor.

She was locked away at eight. She turned that cage into a stage that echoed across a millennium.

Some people refuse to stay small, even when the world demands it.

Hildegard didn't just write music, she invented an entirely new language. Called Lingua Ignota, it contained over 1,000 words and its own alphabet. Scholars still debate whether it was a mystical code, a philosophical experiment, or an early constructed language centuries before Esperanto.

She also described her migraines in such vivid detail that modern neurologists have used her writings to study the visual phenomena of severe migraines. Her descriptions of zigzagging lights and fortification patterns match what we now know as migraine auras, leading some to believe her visions were partly neurological.

Despite her massive influence, Hildegard was nearly canonized multiple times throughout history but the processes stalled or were abandoned. It wasn't until Pope Benedict XVI finally declared her a saint and Doctor of the Church in 2012, more than 800 years after her death, that she received the official recognition many believed she'd earned centuries earlier.

#archaeohistories

[CarolAnnLloyd @shakeuphistory]

Meet Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, sister of the “Princes in the Tower,” niece of Richard III, wife of Henry VII, & mother of Henry VIII.

Her nickname: “Queen of Hearts” and the model for that card in modern decks.

[MaaikeDx 🖌 @RembrandtsRoom]

Is it Easter yet?
(from the Metz pontifical, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 298, f. 7r, early 14th century)

[DaVinci @BiancoDavinci]

fighting a snail, france, 15th century

[Lady Madge Shelton @_MadgeShelton]

@CatholicQuote12 Amen.

[Lady Madge Shelton @_MadgeShelton]

@ValkyrieJDR @AndrewZywiecMD Mullen or Mullein? I have mullein in my herb garden--fuzzy leaves, yellow flowers?

[Medieval History Buff @Medievalhtybuff]

Halley's Comet, as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry. The comet was seen over the skies of England in April of 1066

[Lady Madge Shelton @_MadgeShelton]

@voidbolts Beautiful!

[Lady Madge Shelton @_MadgeShelton]

@HenryBrandon29 My Lord Brandon *curtseys without meeting his eyes*
Thou art well, one hopes?

[Lady Madge Shelton @_MadgeShelton]

@luxthos Congratulations, ser!

[Lady Madge Shelton @_MadgeShelton]

@luxthos Finished this last year, you're almost there! Good luck in Shadowlands!

[Lady Madge Shelton @_MadgeShelton]

@pwiests Beautiful ❤️