Hold! Hold, I say!

I was looking over this groups of archers that I had painted on a scroll and it occurred to me how unsafe this is. From a marshal's perspective, I would have to call "hold" and, perhaps, kick one or more of these archers off of the range. Look at them. The dude in green has an arrow at full draw while standing behind the guy in blue and green. That's a major safety violation. Either the blue and green guy is standing in front of the shooting line and the dude in green doesn't care, or the dude is shooting from behind the shooting line and still doesn't care that there is another person in the shooting arc. And the four guys standing at the rear? Why didn't they call "hold"? Where is the marshal? Who is running this range.

If I ever do this image, on a scroll, again, I will put the guy in blue and green at the back of the group so that it doesn't look like he is about to be shot in the back.

Bloody runny ink

I had just started the calligraphy on a backlog scroll for the West Kingdom when this happened. The ink just pooled on the surface and ran. It might have been due to the weather or because I was writing in front of other people. It's time to scrape and sand.

Those Magnificent Monks In Their Flying Machines

In the opening years of the 11th Century, a monk, living at Wiltshire Abbey, constructed a flying machine and leapt from one of the abbey's towers. Fantastically, the monk, named Eilmer of Malmesbury, did not die, but soared like a bird. A hundred and twenty years later, the historian William of Malmesbury recorded the following lines:

"Wherefore a certain Monk of our Monastery, by name Eilmer ... was a man learned for those times, of mature age and in his youth had hazarded an attempt of singular temerity.  He had by some contrivance fastened wings to his hands and feet so that, mistaking fable for true, he might fly like Daedalus, and, collecting the breeze on the summit of a tower, he flew for more than the distance of a furlong [1]. But, agitated by the violence of the wind and the swirling of air, as well as by awareness of his rashness, he fell, broke his legs, and was lame ever after. He used to relate as the cause of his failure his forgetting to provide himself a tail." [2]

The abbot forbade Eilmer from ever experimenting with flight again, and thus human flight was curtailed for centuries.[3] But, dear reader, do not think of Eilmer's attempt as a failure. The tower Eilmer launched himself from is no longer standing, but the present abbey is of a similar height: 25 meters. Local legend states that Eilmer landed in Oliver Lane, some 200 meters from the present day abbey. An impressive first attempt. The flight might have been longer if not for the wind. "But William says that Eilmer flew "spatio stadii et plus," or more than 600 feet," before falling" [4]

So, Eilmer either glided 200 meters straight into the ground, breaking both of his legs on landing, or flew for 200 meters, lost control and fell from some height and then broke both of his legs. In either case, quite impressive, and quite inspiring. The flight of Eilmer was told and retold by historians. First by William of Malmesbury [5] who would have had access to the abbey's records and would have spoken to people whose parents or grandparents might have seen the flight with their own eyes.

Helinand quotes William verbatim in the 1299 "Chronicon", as does Alberic of Trois-Fontaines in 1241. Vincent of Beauvais re-told Eilmer's story in 1250 in "Speculum". In 1352 Ralph Higden, in his Polychronicon, renamed the monk Oliver due to a mistranslation. Henry Knighton and John of Trevisa, did write about "Oliver's" flight in their histories. Roger Bacon did not mention Eilmer by name, but in his discussions on human flight wrote, "Such devices have long since been made, as well as in our own day, and it is certain that there is a flying machine. I have not seen one, nor have I known anyone who has seen one. But I know a wise man who has designed one." [6]. Personally, I think that that is a mistranslation: there is no evidence of any medieval flyers during Bacon's life [7] and the final line, of the quote, might have been "But I know OF a wise man who has designed one."

The amazing thing was not that one monk managed to fly for 200 meters, some 1100 years ago, the truly amazing thing was that it took so long for another European to make another attempt. [8]

"There is, however, no evidence that memory of Eilmer's feat helped to stimulate the new burst of speculation and experiment about aviation which occurred in Italy in the later fifteenth century. Even before 1449 the engineer Giovanni da Fontana rejects the idea of ascent by hot-air balloons as too hazardous of fire, but expresses entire confidence that human flight can be achieved with mechanical wings. Indeed, he has thought of making some himself, "sed aliis distractus occupationibus non perfeci." Leonardo da Vinci's sketches of parachutes and flying devices are well known but none appears to have been constructed. The evidence that in the 1490's Giovanni Battista Danti of Perugia flew in a glider over Lake Trasimeno has as yet emerged in no document earlier than 1648. But we must assume that when, in October 1507, an Italian named Giovanni Damiani, who in 1504 had been appointed Abbot of Tungland, a Premonstratensian monastery in Galloway, garbed himself in wings made of feathers, took flight from the walls of Stirling Castle, plummeted, and broke his leg, he was inspired by experiments in his native land rather than by Eilmer's example. Damiani sardonically announced that his error had been to include hens' feathers in his wings, since hens have more at scratching in dunghills than for soaring to the heavens." [9]

[1] 220 yards

[2] Woosnam, p3-4

[3] Jones, p132

[4] White (2), p98

[5] "Gesta regum Anglorum", 1125

[6] De secretis operibus, cap. 4, in Opera quaedam hactenus inedita, ed. J. S. Brewer (London, 1859), p. 533. For the date, cf. S. C. Easton, Roger Bacon and His Search for a Universal Science (New York, 1952), p. 111 - quoted from various sources

[7] 1214-92

[8] The Iranian philospher al-Jauhari, died in a similar flight attempt in Khorosan, sometime between 1003 and 1008 and there is evidence of men flying while strapped to large kites, in China, around the same time.

[9] White (2), p103-4

Bibliography

"Mystery Files - Leonardo da Vinci": National Geographic. TV Program. Season 1, Episode 8

"Terry Jones' Medieval Lives." TV Program. Season 1 Episode 5. The Philosopher

Anderson, Roberta; Bellenger, Dominic. "Medieval Worlds: A Sourcebook." Routledge, 2013

Ereira, Alan; Jones, Terry. "Terry Jones' Medieval Lives." Random House, 2009

Huitson, Toby. Stairway to Heaven: The Functions of Medieval Upper Spaces. Oxbow Books. 2014

Kealey, Edward J.  "Harvesting the Air: Windmill Pioneers in Twelfth-century England." University of California Press, 1987

Lienhard, John H. "The Engines of Our Ingenuity." Episode 3: "The Flying Monk." Radio program; produced by Houston Public Media.

Lienhard, John H. "The Engines of Our Ingenuity." Episode 1142: "Legend and Flight." Radio program; produced by Houston Public Media.

Paz, James. "The Falling Body of Eilmer the Flying Monk: Religious Belief and Technological Innovation in Late Anglo-Saxon England." King’s College London. London Anglo-Saxon Symposium 2014

Sharpe, John. "William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the kings of England. From the earliest period to the reign of King Stephen." London, H. G. Bohn. 1847. Archive.Org: Digitizing sponsor: Northeastern University, Snell Library.

White, Lynn, Jr. (1) "Medieval Religion and Technology: Collected Essays." University of California Press, 1978

White, Lynn, Jr. (2) "Eilmer of Malmesbury, An Eleventh Century Aviator. Medieval Religion and Technology." Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978, Chapter 4.

White, Lynn, Jr. (3) "Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition. Technology and Culture." Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring, 1961), pp. 97-111 The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for the History of Technology

Woosnam, Maxwell. "Eilmer, The Flight and The Comet." Malmesbury, UK: Friends of Malmesbury Abbey. 1986

Confused. Flattered, but confused.

I'm kind of confused. The above image is a inhabited initial that I did on a small scrap of pergamenta that I had sitting around. I don't think it's an exciting image, nor do I think it is my best work, but, for some reason, since I posted this to my Flikr account, it received almost 450 views in a month. This is the single most viewed photo I've posted. And I don't know why: no one has left any comments for it. Are people visiting the page to figure out what it is or because they like it?

New scroll assignment

I have just started a pair of scrolls for Ice Dragon 2015 for the Prince's and Princess's choice for the Arts and Sciences Pentathlon.

I picked a pair of images from the same source (Walters Art Museum Ms. W.171), similar enough so that all will know that they are a matched set, but not copies of one another.

Broken face

I was working on a new scroll and I really messed up on a face:

I need to let it dry and then scrape her face off and try again. Or maybe have her hold a fan in front of her face.

I let the paint dry for a couple of days and then carefully scraped away the top layer of the paper along with the paint. I then sanded the area and smoothed it down with a stone. I then re-penciled and inked in the lines of the face and re-painted it.

I'm still not happy with the results, but the lady now looks less like a neanderthal with a uni-brow. I had also messed up the "windows" above the ladies's heads, but I didn't feel like fixing them.

Almond Milk

Milk was an important ingredient in medieval cookery. The problem with animal milk (milk from cows, goats and sheep) was that it had a very limited shelf life. Also, the taste and quality of milk changed with the seasons and with the feed of the animals. Add to that the fact that animal milk was prohibited on fast and lean days. To get around these issues, medieval cooks turned to other sources for milk. Almonds, as well as hazelnuts and walnuts, can be turned into a milk-like substance.

Like animal milk, almond milk can by churned into butter, can thicken sauces and carry fat soluble flavors. Since it contains no animal products, almond milk could be enjoyed on fast and lean days and during Lent. Almond milk also had a more consistent flavor than animal milk and does not spoil easily. It could be made as needed and any excess could be stored for several weeks. While it was an ingredient in many dishes, almond milk was also consumed just like animal milk; by the glass. It was recommended, by physicians, as "blessed with qualities that were very close to the healthy human temperamant"[1] and was prescribed for those who were sick or had digestive problems.

Sources:

From Du fait de cuisine:
28. And again, flans of almond milk: according to the quantity of flans which you are making take the quantity of almonds, have them well and cleanly blanched and washed and then have them very well brayed; and take very clean fair water and let him strain his almond milk into a bowl or a cornue which is fair and clean according to the quantity of flans which he should make....

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From Le Viandier de Taillevent,
Take peeled almonds, crush very well in a mortar, steep in water boiled and cooled to lukewarm, strain through cheesecloth, and boil your almond milk on a few coals for an instant or two.

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The redaction from A Boke of Gode Cokkery
1 cup ground almonds
2 cups boiling water

Combine almonds and water. Steep for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Sieve the mixture to remove coarse grains OR (preferably) blend mixture in electric blender until grains are absorbed. Yield - 2 cups almond milk.

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The redaction from Medieval Cookery
2 cups blanched almonds
3 cups hot water

Grind almonds until fine, almost like flour. Pour hot water into almonds, mixing well. Allow to soak for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour through a fine strainer into a bowl, discarding solids (they can be used again with more water, but the resulting almond milk will be thinner and won't work as well in recipes).

==============================

My method is as follows:

1 cup whole, blanched almonds
2 cups boiling water

Grind the almonds by hand, using a mortar and pestle: grind until you end up with a gritty paste. This will take a while, but the finer the paste is, the better the end result will be. Once you have achieved paste, set two cups of water to the heat and bring it to a rolling boil. Once you have a rolling boil, add the almond paste and take the water off of the heat. Let the mixture steep for ten minutes, stirring every few minutes. After ten minutes, strain the mixture through cheesecloth; make sure to squeeze all of the liquid from the cloth. Be careful, the liquid will hot. Cover the almond milk and let it cool on the counter. Once cool, feel free to drink the milk or use it for cooking. In a sealed container, your almond milk will last about a week on the counter, or up to three weeks in the 'fridge.

Observations:

By following this method you will end up with something with the taste and consistency of almond-flavored skim milk, and while it can thicken a sauce like milk or cream, it doesn't do it as well or as quickly. Also, the almond flavor doesn't cook out. Also, almonds have no sugar, so almond milk isn't sweet like cow or goat milk[2]. Modern, mass-produced almond milk is not the same thing as our period product: they are vitamin fortified, with extra fat, sugar and emulsifiers added to give them the flavor, and mouth-feel, of cow milk.

A purely modern method would be to put a cup of blanched almonds in a bar blender with two cups of hot water and blend until smooth. The bar blender will whip air into the mixture and pulverize the almonds, releasing more of the drupe's[3] natural emulsifiers, thickening the liquid. Like modern almond milk, the bar-blender method would give you almond milk closer in mouth feel to cow milk than what you would attain with hand grinding the almonds.

You can use the same method to make milk from hazelnuts, walnuts and pecans, but I do not know of any documentation for pecan milk before the American revolution.

[1] Master Chiquart, Du Fait du Cuisine
[2] I've never had sheep milk before.
[3] Almonds are drupes, not nuts.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:
A Boke of Gode Cookery. Almond Milk 2000. James L. Matterer. http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec31.htm Accessed on November 7, 2012 , 10:12 am.

Chiquart, Maistre. Du fait de cuisine. translated by Elizabeth Cook
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Du_Fait_de_Cuisine/Du_fait_de_Cuisine.html. Accessed on November 7, 2012 , 10:15 am.

Le Viandier De Taillevent: 14th Century Cookery, Based on the Vatican Library Manuscript. Authors Taillevent, James Prescott. Translated by James Prescott. Contributor Biblioteca apostolica vaticana. Edition 2, illustrated. Alfarhaugr Pub. Society, 1989.

Medieval Cokkery, Almond Milk Daniel Myers 9/15/2006
http://medievalcookery.com/recipes/almondmilk.html Accessed on November 7, 2012 , 9:42 am.

Scully, D. Eleanor, Scully, Terence. Early French Cookery: Sources, History, Original Recipes and Modern Adaptations. University of Michigan Press, May 7, 2002

Scully, Terence. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1995.

Scully, Terence, ed. Le Viandier de Taillevent. An Edition of all Extant Manuscripts. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988.