Eric Wolever

Enhanced image of palimpsested page, original writing in red; a large illuminated 'E' can be seen in bottom right quadrant.

Somehow, an 8th-c. English liturgical manuscript ended up in Mount Sinai (where it was palimpsested and written over by a Christian Arabic scribe). For more info: Michelle Brown, austriaca.at/0xc1aa5572%2...

Love this (bloodless) account of the Norman conquest in Bodleian Library MS Rawl. B 150

A masterful application of the passive voice.

I hope it's useful to you if you can get your hands on a copy! That said, if you've not looked at it, a surprisingly good starting point for scholarly networks in Paris during the first half of the twelfth century is Joachim Ehler's 2013 biography of Otto von Freising.

No problem!

If you do want to go into whether this is the Glossa Ordinaria, most of the relevant info needed can be found in Lesley Smith, The Glossa ordinaria... (2009). But unless that fragment is from Bruno, I wouldn't expect an especially definitive answer. (So maybe not worth your time.)

"Document" isn't a big problem. Since they already translated Stiftungsurkunde as foundation charter (is "foundation" is the right word in this specific case?), "document" would be the Oberbegriff referring back to "charter".

That's unfortunate. 😕

Tbh I had thought it looked better than a pure machine translation (it's certainly understandable), but I read the German version, so I really only glanced over the English. But maybe German -> English has improved more than I realize in recent years.

E.g., there's a fragment of a C12 (looks mid-century to me) glossed copy of the Pauline epistles (the end of 2 Tim. 4 and beginning of Titus) from Hildesheim, which bears some resemblance to the standard Gl. ord., but is quite clearly a different gloss.

diglib.hab.de/mss/124-novi...

My own 2 cents here are that I wonder whether Bruno's donation included the Glossa ordinaria as we'd think of it today. The date is quite early (though certainly possibly by the second quarter of the century), but there were lots of other glosses still floating around at this stage.

This totally passed me by at the time, but it's a really fun little text on the diffusion of medical texts in twelfth century Germany by @mqassiti.bsky.social ! (There's also a version in English for those who don't do German, if you change the language in the top right.)

From mid-February 2026, the MGH is able to make all articles from the DA and NA available in digital form, fully searchable and open access! #medievalsky

mgh.de/en/publicati...

the stemma codicum of any texts that survive the Digital Dark Ages will be like

[original]
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[uploaded PDF]
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wikipedia chatgpt
redaction summary
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chatgpt |
summary ---- Papyrus
of wikipedia nukecraterus N. 47

I do wonder a but how one could conclude that (2). Like, I've spent about an hour before on the Aquinas table in Steffens, Lateinische Paläographie and while very messy, it's clearly standard gothic letter forms and abbrs. (It actually reminds me a bit of gothic cursive, e.g. the e.)

That said, I should really emphasize that this is just my 2 cents on the discourse both here and as I've seen it in the past.

I'm not personally bothered by the use of imperial and certainly wouldn't argue for any inherent superiority of metric.

4/4

This is part of why, if we are making a linguistic analogy, I see this (2) as coming from native English speakers, and why the implicit suggestion that we ought to regard the US as a sort of minority language user but for measures gives me pause.

3/4

Measurement systems are to my mind more tenuously regarded as such. And as it's the US and to a lesser extent the UK that cling to these, I can't help but feel that the reality is rather the inverse and this is an expression of cultural hegemony: We shouldn't need to use foreign measures.

2/4

Re. resentment, my experience is more mixed (I know L2 speakers who like English in this context), but this draws us back to (1).

But tbh I don't see that we can push the analogy with language that far. Languages are important for their foundational role in one's cultural identity.

1/4

2) I think that it's certainly worth reflecting as native English speakers about posing an argument for linguistic plurality against the argument for an international standard, since much of the world *does* have to learn another language to take part in an international standard: English.

2/2

I should emphasize I was addressing the suggestion that F was more intuitive/useful for the human scale.

But my .02$: 1) I think the wider context here is the US refusal almost lone to join the international standard and the almost ps-nationalist lionization of imperial and ...

1/2

Finally, the notion of precision is again a red herring here, as anything less than about a 2°C change in temp is not meaningfully perceptible.

The same point goes for my experience of M/CM vs Ft/In. (Which again are intuitive or not for me respectively depending what I'm talking about.)

4/4

For example, I still find F more "intuitive" for water temp, not because F is more "human", but because that's what I heard growing up and I've not collected a similar set of experiences for C so as to build an intuitive feel for what the numbers mean in that context.

3/n

But the broader point, and I speak as someone who has by happenstance of geography had a wider than usual experience of both C and F for various different tasks (and having switched in some areas of my life), it's all just a matter of learned convention.

2/n

I've heard this argument before, and it's thoroughly unconvincing. The freezing point of water is extremely relevant to our experience of regular weather. Like that's the threshold at which we need to deal with snow or watch out for ice. I also find it a relevant experiential threshold.

1/n

Cover of the book: North, South, East and West in Twelfth-Century Thought by Eric Wolever

Hey, so I have a book that now exists and that you can purchase (apparently the code BB135 on the boydell webpage will get you a 35% discount) or more realistically recommend to your library! 😅

(Please don't mind the fact that I'm like a month late promoting this here...)

Paleography peeps: I'm collecting examples of premodern descriptive or evaluative (sc. judgy) language about script. E.g. Boniface requesting a book "claris et absolutis litteris scripti" because he can't read "minutas litteras ac connexas" anymore. #medievalsky 🧵

Semiotic paradox alert!

A screenshot from Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you up music video

A screenshot from Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you up music video

A screenshot from Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you up music video

A photograph of the seminary gym in knives out. It has the same window.

Just watched the new Knives Out and I think it's really important you know that the scene in the Seminary's Gym is filmed in the same place Rick Astley filmed the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up.

I saw the window tracery and immediately made my friends pause the film so I could tell them.

dril tweet: 'this whole thing smacks of gender' i holler as i overturn my uncle's barbeque gril and turn the 4th of july into the 4th of shit

HISTORY OF THE 21ST CENTURY: EXAM PART II, ESSAYS

1. Look at the following image. To what extent does the text encapsulate the cultural phenomena that led to the downfall of the American empire?

#PSA: If you feel that #KPopDemonHunters is below your lofty standards for acceptable cultural consumption, you can read Augustine's De Civitate Dei (esp. Book 8) instead.

Conversely, if you have no time for Augustine's De Civitate Dei, just watch K-Pop Demon Hunters. Better soundtrack, too.

Coming soon! We are excited to share our first issue in just a few months.

We are also accepting submissions for issue 2 onwards! Feel free to send any questions or ideas to @calthalas.bsky.social @sihonglin.bsky.social or me on here, or with the editors via email tinyurl.com/tph5wvmd