Gruesome: Blood of Decapitated King Found in Gourd

People like trophies of their victories; of course, that depends on the context of the victory.  When the victory is the execution of a king, trophies of blood appear to be the order of the day -- at least, in 1793 in revolutionary France (or if your name happens to be Tamyris).

It's always been rumoured that the people present at the execution of Louis XVI dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood that spilled from the neck of the dead king.  Now, thanks to DNA analysis, that claim has been proven in a report published last month in the journal Forensic Science International.

One of these handkerchiefs was stored in a dried gourd, made for the purpose.  Over time, the handkerchief deteriorated, however, the blood remained dried on the inside of the gourd:

 Gourd containing the dried blood of the executed King Louis XVI of France.  The inscription reads "On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation."  Via Livescience.

The gourd has been held by a wealthy Italian family for a number of years and until now, there has been no real way of proving the inscription.  This is mostly because the French royal family had a bit of a hard time of it (to say the least) during the French Revolution, even the dead ones.  The royal family was so hated that revolutionaries actually went to the cemetery at Saint-Denis, took the long-dead bodies of the royals from their tombs, mutilated the corpses and tossed the remains into pits.  In 2010, however, a head from one of these mutilated corpses surfaced and was made available to the scientific community for DNA testing.  It was said to be the head of this man, Good King Henry:

 Before death and desecration:  Henry IV of France -- Good King Henry rose to the throne in 1589 when his cousin, Henry III of France, was assassinated by a fanatical Catholic monk.

Good King Henry was actually considered to be a pretty awesome ruler, as rulers go, trying to improve the lives of all his subjects and quoted as saying things like "If God keeps me, I will make sure that there is no sharecropper in my kingdom who does not have the means to have a chicken in the pot every Sunday!"  However, given the anger of the revolutionaries, and the fact that his reign ended in 1610 -- and that the revolution took place in the 1790s...  It's hardly surprising, really, that they revolutionaries desecrated the graves, even if it is really very grim.  And it is really very grim.  Check it out:

 After death and desecration:  The head of King Henry IV of France, found in the garage of a French pensioner in 2010.  You can actually see where his ear was pierced too.  Born in 1553, died 1610 when he was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic.  Who knew that death to religious fanatics could be hereditary across cousins?

The first genetic tests on the head were inconclusive, however, they later retested with materials taken from inside the head that had suffered less deterioration.  From this material they were able to actually perform a DNA analysis which could then be compared to the blood from the gourd.  They compared the Y chromosomes and were able to determine that yes, these two individuals were very much more than likely related -- 250 times more likely to be related than not.  Additionally, both samples showed characteristics exhibited by people in the Bourbon region of France, where they were from.

Now the blood has been confirmed, scientists intend to map the genome of King Louis XVI of France, which could be one of the first historical genomes to be mapped. 

The Jesse Tree

It's been a little while since my last posting... You know how it is -- December is a month for family and friends visiting and for panicking and shopping and, well, failing to get stuff done.  I even got a little bit of writer's block, if I'm honest, so I decided to turn to my leatherworking muse to try and shift it.  In doing research for tree designs, I came across the idea of a Jesse Tree -- an unfamiliar idea that actually should be very familiar, as it turns out.

A Jesse Tree from the Winchester Psalter, a 12th century book of psalms from England, made for the brother of King Stephen.  It depicts the line of Christ.  Yep, it's a family tree.

The chap lying down at the bottom is Jesse, father to David, who is the chap on the first fork of the tree.  It ascends up to Mary and then Jesus at the top.  The chaps at either side are actually prophets, holding the scriptures that point to the prophesy of Christ as the Messiah.  It's a fairly common theme in these scriptural family trees -- but they're not just kept to books.  Trees of Jesse are also depicted in stained glass windows in churches and as time went on, good grief, they got grand:

 

Stained glass Jesse Tree at Saint-Étienne's church in Beauvais, France, created between 1522-1524.  Jesse is the chap in the four-poster bed at the bottom.  To his left is Francis I of France and to his right is the Holy Roman Emporer Charlies V.  The rest are misc kings of Judea plus St. Louis.

It took two years for this to be put together -- it's no wonder really to look at it.  It's amazingly beautiful and detailed.  If you'd like to see better and more in detail pictures, check out this article by Professor Moriarty. 

It wasn't just stereotypical churchy things that got the whole Jesse Tree treatment either.  I came across a liturgical comb fragment that features this design:

Ivory comb fragment from Bavaria, Germany.  It's from between 1180-1220 and measures 3 5/8"x4" in size and has an insane amount of detail.  Each of the scriptures have writing in Latin, in incredibly small lettering...  How much skill?

Isiah is stood on the left, holding a scroll that translates to "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse...".  I don't think they could have thought of a more unattractive way of putting it.  Yeesh.  That was probably the point though.

I've always wondered where the idea of a family tree actually came from.  Incidentally, the Jesse Tree bears no relation to the Christmas tree, even though I really looked for that connection -- well, you know.  It's December.  Everything has to be Christmas related, right?

The Smithfield Decretals

In my random googlings today, I came across a manuscript with the weirdest marginalia.  It's the Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria, specifically The Smithfield Decretals.  This work was a collection of medieval canon law, designed to replace all the previous collections.  Originally compiled in 1230, this specific manuscript was actually finished around 1300 in Southern France.  Well, the written part was. 

 Top:  The last page of the Smithfield Decretals, including illustrations.  Oh, the folio is half a metre tall, by the way.

Bottom:  Close up of the last line of the manuscript.  Translated, it reads "The whole thing is finished; give the guy who wrote it a drink."  Good man!

Nearly all the illuminations, however, were added 40 years later.  Whoever owned it at that point lived in England and commissioned a group of artists to illuminate every page of the folio.  Some of the pages have pretty illustrations of birds or people hunting boar and are fairly "normal".  Other pages show battles and sieges, with some interesting details:

In this case, the interesting detail is that the castle is being defended by a sword-wielding woman.  Judging by the hairstyles, everyone in the castle is female, barring the face at the window, which could be that of a child.  Still, looks like the guy on the ladder is having a really bad hair day...

There are also some illustrations of Reyard the Fox, who was a trickster character in European folklore.  He is shown preaching to geese, chickens and even a heron.  But of course, geese are tasty...

Nom, nom, nom, geese.  I wonder what this picture could *possibly* be an allegory of... that's almost brave for the time!

Of course, once Reynard is caught, he must face  justice for his crime.  Hanging is a fitting medieval punishment for theft and murder:

The geese and ducks require retribution!  Though how on Earth that goose intends to fire that bow is beyond me...

Given that Reynard was a wily type, he probably managed to talk them out of it at the last, mind.  The manuscript has many story pictures of this type, including the revenge of the bunny rabbits, a knight jousting against a snail, and a dragon attacking a windmill.  If any of these descriptions take your fancy, a catalogue of images is available here:  http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=6549&CollID=16&NStart=100504

I swear, there is even one captioned "Man attacking a butterfly."  I'd love to know the context for that one...

Boccaccio's Famous Women

I was doing more research into Chaucer's works when I stumbled upon Boccaccio.  Boccaccio wrote the Decameron, published around 1353, which is the work that inspired Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.  Boccaccio also wrote a work in 1374 called De Claris Mulieribus (Of Famous Women).  This book was unusual for it's time in that it was the first collection of solely female biographies ever written.  It includes 106 different biographies about famous historical or mythological women.  Of course, as this is a medieval work, there are several different copies of this manuscript.  On top of that, Boccaccio also decided that he'd like to revise his book a few times in the last 20 years of his life and send many of them to influential women.  As this was a very popular book, there were also versions printed after his death.  My favourite illustrations are from De Claris Mulieribus, 599, which is held by the National Library of France, which is dated as being 1401-1500, with no further information.  Sadly, their online copy is only available in black and white, which is rubbish because the illustrations in this particular manuscript are beautiful.  Hooray for Wikimedia Commons though, which has plenty of the illustrations in colour!

What I find surprising about this particular manuscript is how many women are pictured wearing armour.  Take Tamyris for example:

Queen Tamyris of the Massagetae, lead her army to victory against the Persians in 529BC.  "I warned you that I would quench your thirst for blood, and so I shall".  Wikimedia Commons.

Queen Tamyris became queen of her people in her own right after her husband died.  The Persian emporer of the time, Cyrus the Great, decided he wanted her land and asked her to marry him.  She refused and so there was war.  There were a few more complications than that, in all honesty; after all, her son was captured and committed suicide in shame.  That's going to make any mother angry, so when she and her army caught up to Cyrus, she had him killed, then beheaded and crucified, before putting his head into a wineskin filled with blood.  After that, she had his brain scooped out and turned into a bowl for wine, just in case that wasn't enough retribution for the loss of her son and the deaths of those in her armies. To clarify, Tamyris is a historical person, just in case any of that seemed too fantastic.

Another warrior woman shown in armour in the manuscript is Penthesilea.  Penthesilea was an Amazon queen who accidentally killed another Amazon queen whilst out hunting, so in order to be purified of the crime, she was sent to fight on the side of Troy in the Trojan War.

"Furious Penthesilea leads a battleline of Amazons with crescent shields, and she glows in the middle of thousands fastening golden belts around the exposed breast, female warrior, and the maiden dares to run with men."  From The Aenid.  The picture does not show exposed breast, but it certainly hints at it.  I also cannot help but wonder if it is inferred that there is armour plating under that skirt, but that's my personal speculation.

Penthesilea caught the attention of Achilles due to her prowess in battle and so he arranged matters to where he would face her on the battlefield.  She fought him, but sadly, she was fighting Achilles.  The story goes that as she died, Achilles saw her beauty, fell in love and actually mourned her.

The other two women to be shown in armour in this manuscript are Orithyia and Antiope, who were both Amazon queens who co-ruled:

Nice armour, ladies.  Although I'd love to know how Antiope intends to sit down without stabbing herself somewhere entirely unpleasant.

Antiope was the wife of Theseus and there are several variations on her tale, all ending in her death in a battle or fight.  Orithyia, likewise, died of her wounds after beseigeing Athens in order to get her sister back.  In a way, showing these four women in armour is not strange, as Tamrys and Penthesilea are two of the nine female worthies named by Eustache Deschamps -- individuals who personified the ideals of chivalry of the later part of the 15th century.  From there it's easily argued that if you show one Amazon in armour, you have to show the rest in armour too.

The manuscript has so much to offer in terms of showing female attire of the 15th century though.  For example you've a depiction of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife looking quite well dressed:

 I bet that headdress makes her at least a foot and a half taller.  However, you have to appreciate that neckline...

...and Epicharis, a freedwoman from Nero's Rome, who refused to betray her fellow conspirators to assassination, despite being heavily tortured.  She's shown in the manuscript with some very nice side lacing:

In case you're wondering, she's said to have strangled herself on her girdle in order to prevent her confession under a second bout of torture...

There are so many examples of good medieval female fashion in De Claris Mulieribus 599 that it's worth checking out the gallery on Wikimedia Commons.  I do believe this manuscript is also worthy of a few posts!

Henry VIII: The Prince in Mourning

When you think of Henry VIII, you think of a rather large ginger man who ate too much and always got his way.  The church disagreed with him, so he left and created his own damn church; he went through wives at a rate of knots; he was absolute ruler and commanded obedience in court.  He pulled no punches and seemed pretty heartless, but he also came across as a strong, charismatic leader, showing anger rather than sadness or vulnerability.

 Henry VIII.  Ladies... check out my cod.  WOOF!

Portrait from 1540 by Hans Holbein.

People forget that the man was once a child whose mother died when he was 11.  It had been a hard time for the family; his brother, Arthur, died of some kind of fever-based illness in April 1502.  Elizabeth, his mother, fell pregnant and gave birth to a girl called Catherine on the 2nd February, 1503, but the child died a few days later.  Elizabeth then died to a post partum infection a week after the child died.  You cannot help but empathise with the small child shown in this manuscript:

 Prince Henry weeping at his mother's empty death bed.  The two girls are his sisters shown in mourning attire, Princess Margaret (aged 13) and Princess Mary (aged 7).  Poor kids.

Image from the National Library of Wales.

Henry was known to be very close to his mother so it's no surprise that the young prince was devastated.  It's possible that his distanced relationship with his father was compounded by his mother's death, as according to one account, his father "privily departed to a solitary place and would no man should resort unto him".  Harsh.  Sometimes a kid needs his dad, even in 1503.

This image has had a lot of interest lately; although the Vaux Passional has been in the National Library of Wales since 1921, it's recently been digitised and therefore re-evaluated.  No one had really looked at it in a while.  People are interested in this image because Henry VIII has never been pictured as being vulnerable or even having grieved for anyone much, even as a child.  During the re-evaluation, it became evident that this Passional was likely part of the library of Henry VIII's father, Henry VII.  In fact, it's possible that the image below actually shows the Vaux Passional being given to Henry VII:

Illumination showing the possible presentation of the book to the king.  Prince Henry is weeping in the background.

The activity in the background has actually helped to date the piece somewhat, placing its creation at the start of the 16th century.  The manuscript, which is written in French, similarly follows themes of death.  It contains two bodies of work -- a Passional and Le Miroir de la Mort by Georges Chastellain.  The Passional calls on the reader to meditate on the arrest, trial, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ.  It starts at the raising of Lazarus and ends with Judas and Pontius Pilate.  Le Miroir de la Mort is a work that discusses "the futility of wordly pleasures in the face of certain death".  Cheery stuff then.

 Illumination from the Vaux Passional showing "Christ between two thieves".  The source has stunning detail, available here)

The manuscript also shows the seige and fall of Jerusalem, which I think is my favourite illumination -- saving for that of Prince Henry:

It's worth taking a look through the National Library of Wales online gallery for this book.  It's all stunning, and all done by one person who lived in London back in the early 1500s.  No one knows who made it, but it's pretty clear they had a good understanding of death and sadness.  It's also a wonderful reminder that this "swaggering warrior king" was once a child.

Medieval Leather Caskets

This beauty turned up in my feed today, from the Cleveland Museum of Art:

This is a gorgeous casket that dates between 1350-1400.  It's a French casket made of wood but decorated with iron mounts and incised leather.  Needless to say that as a leatherworker myself, I find it really interesting to see some of the techniques I use in my workshop now being put into practice by folks centuries before!  I've often thought about making something similar, but this is definitely giving me the shove to.

It's dimensions are h:  4 1/8" (10.5cm), w: 9 7/8" (25.2cm) d:  7 7/16" (19cm).  This particular box would have been commissioned by someone who had money -- probably aristocratic in nature.  It has a scene of romantic love stamped into the surface, which means it was likely given as a love token or betrothal gift.  The box features banderoles, with text written in Old French with mutual expressions of love.  On the lid of the box, the lady asks "Hold my heart".  The man on the lid replies "But you already have it".  On the front of the box, the man is shown holding a heart saying "have it once more".

These boxes were usually created for the secular market and used for storing personal items such as books, documents, letters or jewelry.  Often wooden cored boxes were guilded or covered with ivory or leather.  In Germany, they were referred to as "minnekastchen" or "minneskästchen".  Below is a similar minnekastchen  from Germany, dated between 1351-1375.

The picture is from http://www.jmrw.com/Chess/Tableau_echecs/pages/198.htm, but it doesn't have a whole lot of info on the page.  It simply states that the box shows a man and a woman playing chess.  This box looks like it's been carved from wood with a cutaway wood layer over the top, which itself has been painted.  The site does, however, provide a closeup of the detail:

We can see in close up that both carry birds, which are noble signifiers, though I've no idea about the chap's strange green outfit.  Answers on a postcard, anyone?

Either way, these boxes are awesome little things.  If you'd like to read more about them, there's a really good site for it (with lots of pictures) over here:  http://thomasguild.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/kolner-minnekastchen.html