TranscriptionA drawing of a naked person being dragged away by a green demon; the drawing is surrounded by a border with various drawn mussels and clams. The caption reads “Monk 1: What are you drawing? Monk 2: A poor soul being dragged to hell by demons. Monk 1: Cool! And what are you planning to use as a border? Monk 2: I'm thinking freshwater mussels. Monk 1: That's really perfect.”

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[–] 52 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Monk 2: I sure hope my painstakingly hand drawn illumination won't be nitpicked by some smug jerk from the future.

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  • [–] 31 points 1 year ago

    Don't be shellfish.

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I feel like this is what happens when 2 people work on different parts of a project without any kind of coordination between them

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago

    This could literally be a Dwarf Fortress randomly generated inscription.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    Deacon: "Brother Ted, you've messed it up again. I clearly said I wanted a demon with giant muscles!"

    Brother Ted: "But that's what I did. You can clearly see the mussels all around the border!"

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    IIRC mussels were “unclean”, so would that jive with the whole demonic sin thing?

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  • [–] [S] 12 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Fun fact: it’s “jibe” not “jive” - https://www.grammarly.com/commonly-confused-words/jibe-vs-jive

    Please don’t take this as me being an asshole, it’s just that English is my second language, and I find this kind of stuff fascinating.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Second-language English speaker correcting first-language speaker - are you Dutch by any chance?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Jibe is also a term from sailing meaning to reset a sail attached to a boom

    https://www.etymonline.com/word/jibe

    try not to get too caught up on the dictionary meaning of words, languages are living, to jive with something could to dance together

    interesting that jive and jibe have the b/v in them so can be easy to mix them either way

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Leviticus 11 9 “‘Of all the creatures living in the water of the seas and the streams you may eat any that have fins and scales. 10 But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales—whether among all the swarming things or among all the other living creatures in the water—you are to regard as unclean. 11 And since you are to regard them as unclean, you must not eat their meat; you must regard their carcasses as unclean. 12 Anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales is to be regarded as unclean by you"

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    I love these because it give us a glimpse into oldschool metaphors that were so, so obvious at the time. Like of course you're going to slap down some mussels on that hell talk because it's an unclean abomination.

    And of course you're gonna give a pregnant women a pomegranate, and make sure jesus has a pelican. Why wouldn't jesus be hanging with a pelican? If not, at least make sure he's holding a fish and there's a shepherd in there somewhere.

    The illuminaries were memelord shitposters.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago*

    Those demons… one is so over it, the other is shocked by the same exact thing for the 468733 time.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    ...and hell is inside a gigantic otter?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Middle-ages cloistered monks really had a lot of time on their hands and no other entertainment, so yeah, crazy art of whatever comes to mind.

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  • I think the period that this book was illuminated in was from later when really fancy books was more of a business for the church. Usually the very early illuminated books were made by a single monk doing most steps of the process (prepping parchment, calligraphy, painting, binding, etc.) but the later books like this may have had different artists for the illuminated letters vs the borders. So there could have been one monk that just likes sea stuff and he was too good for the other brothers to tell him to stop.

    Source: mostly vibes, but I've dipped my toes into illumination and guilding

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Weren't they also often chained to the desks to meet their deadlines tbf?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    The first thing that comes up on a websearch is books being chained to desks, to keep them from getting borrowed. I can't imagine monks chained to their desks will be motivated to do good work, let alone fine art like illumination. Especially if they're under a deadline, which would serve to propagate errors and misspellings.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Old medieval pages look so fascinating. Too bad the letters are so beautifully drawn that I can't even try reading what each word says.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    It's probably in German if that helps you.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Very strategic leg placement there.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    What makes them freshwater mussels? They look like regular ones to my uneducated eye.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Fresh water mussels with a side order of tortured soul, yumm

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    We need to bring back the fancy art borders and drawings into books. I'm tired of reading like an adult.

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  • [+] -5 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)