Saint Brendan’s Island, also known as Saint Brendan’s Isle, is a phantom island or mythical island, supposedly situated in the North Atlantic somewhere west of Northern Africa. It is named after Saint Brendan of Clonfert. He and his followers are said to have discovered it while travelling across the ocean and evangelising its islands. It appeared on numerous maps in Christopher Columbus’s time, most notably Martin Behaim’s Erdapfel of 1492. It is known as La isla de San Borondón and isla de Samborombón in
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The map was found in a convent in Ebstorf, in northern Germany, in 1843.[2] It was a very large map, painted on 30 goatskins sewn together and measuring around 3.6 by 3.6 metres (12 ft × 12 ft)—a greatly elaborated version of the common medieval tripartite, or T and O, map, centered on Jerusalem with east at top.
The head of Christ was depicted at the top of the map, with his hands on either side and his feet at the bottom.[3] Rome is represented in the shape of a lion, and the map reflects an evident interest in the distribution of bishoprics.[1]
There was text around the map, which included descriptions of animals, the creation of the world, definitions of terms, and a sketch of the more common sort of T and O map with an explanation of how the world is divided into three parts. The map incorporated both pagan and biblical history.[3]
Source: Ebstorf Map – Wikipedia
To modern eyes, mappae mundi can look superficially primitive and inaccurate. However, mappae mundi were never meant to be used as navigational charts and they make no pretence of showing the relative areas of land and water. Rather, mappae mundi were schematic and were meant to illustrate different principles. The simplest mappae mundi were diagrams meant to preserve and illustrate classical learning easily. […]
The larger mappae mundi have the space and detail to illustrate further concepts, such as the cardinal directions, distant lands, Bible stories, history, mythology, flora, fauna and exotic races. In their fullest form, such as the Ebstorf and Hereford maps, they become minor encyclopedias of medieval knowledge.
Source: Mappa mundi – Wikipedia
An anonymous renegade faction published birch bark manuscripts blaming the rigid hierarchical structure of the Priesthood of the Hypergeum. The manuscripts used an esoteric system of runic writing, which they claimed was taught to them in their dreams by Zalthyrmians who had been exiled to those realms. […]
As this egalitarian mystical Romantic Quatrian and even semi-Anthuorian revivalism was considered a threat to the ruling powers during the House of Song, the sect was ruthlessly suppressed, and the birch groves wherein they grew their living manuscripts were burned, and the grounds ritually salted.
Source: Zalthyrmians – Quatria – Medium
It is practically inevitable that documents of the same nature, issued from the same office, or even from distinct offices, will bear a close resemblance to one another. Those charged with the execution and expedition of such documents come naturally to employ the same formulæ in similar cases; moreover, the use of such formulæ permits the drafting of important documents to be entrusted to minor officials, since all they have to do is to insert in the allotted space the particular information previously supplied them. Finally, in this way every document is clothed with all possible efficiency, since each of its clauses, and almost every word, has a meaning clearly and definitely intended. Uncertainties and difficulties of interpretation are thus avoided, and not infrequently lawsuits. This legal formalism is usually known as the “style” or habitual diction of chanceries and the documents that issue therefrom. It represents long efforts to bring into the document all necessary and useful elements in their most appropriate order, and to use technical expressions suited to the case, some of them more or less essential, others merely as a matter of tradition. In this way arose a true art of drafting public documents or private acta, which became the monopoly of chanceries and notaries…
The ars dictaminis was the medieval description of the art of prose composition, and more specifically of the writing of letters (dictamen). It is closely linked to the ars dictandi, covering the composition of documents other than letters. The standing assumption was that these writings would be composed in Latin, and according to well worked-out models. This made the arts of composition a subfield of rhetoric.
In business letters, it called for some form of address (e.g., “Worshipful master”); salutation (“I greet you well”); notification (“May it please you to know”); exposition (“the wool was shipped”); disposition (“and I want my money”); and valediction (“May God keep you well, at least until my bill is paid”). Clerks and scribes wrote the letters based on those rules.
Source: Ars dictaminis – Wikipedia
The Archpoet’s life circumstances must be deduced from the content of his poems. Because he designates Rainald of Dassel as Archbishop of Cologne, the Archpoet was probably alive between 1159 (when Rainald became archbishop) and 1167 (when he died). Furthermore, all the Archpoet’s datable poems fall between 1162 and 1164.
The Archpoet’s irreverent, hedonistic lines about drinking in “the tavern” are reminiscent of later work by Rumi and Omar Khayyam, so he may have been influential beyond his seeming anonymity. The Archpoet may also have been an early “model” for anti-establishment poets like William Blake and rebellious singer-songwriters like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Sam Cooke, John Lennon, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Kurt Cobain.
The Archpoet left us ten poems, all written in Latin. The best-known poem, “His Confession,” appeared in the Carmina Burana manuscript, a collection of medieval Latin and German writings. The Archpoet is considered to be an exemplar of the Goliardic school of poets, along with Hugh Primas of Orleans, Pierre de Blois, Gautier de Châtillon and Phillipe the Chancellor. The Goliards wrote bibulous poems: satires and parodies in which they lampooned the Catholic Church over the excesses and abuses of its clergy. […]
In any case, by the 14th century the term “goliard” had become synonymous with “minstrel” and no longer referred to rebellious clerics. The term “goliard” survives in “jongleur,” which appears in Chaucer and in Piers Plowman. A jongleur was a juggler, a jester, a court fool, an acrobat, a troubadour and/or a minstrel. The jongleurs were the original entertainers — singing, dancing and cavorting for tips.
Source: The Archpoet: His Confession, translated from the Latin by Helen Waddell
The Archpoet (c. 1130 – c. 1165),[1] or Archipoeta (in Latin and German),[2] is the name given to an anonymous 12th-century author of ten medieval Latin poems, the most famous being his “Confession” found in the Carmina Burana manuscript (under CB 191). Along with Hugh Primas of Orléans (with whom he has sometimes been confused),[nb 1] he is cited as the best exemplar of Goliardic poetry[3] and one of the stellar poets of the Latin Middle Ages.[4]
Knowledge about him comes essentially from his poems found in manuscripts:[5] his noble birth[6] in an unspecified region of Western Europe,[7][8] his respectable and classical education,[9][10] his association with Archchancellor Rainald of Dassel’s court,[11] and his poetic activity linked to it in both content and purpose.[4][12] As such, it has been speculated that the bibulous, extravagant personality emanating from his work could be only serving as a façade despite its apparent autobiographical trend.[13]
Source: Archpoet – Wikipedia
Clerici vagantes or vagabundi (singular clericus vagans or vagabundus) is a medieval Latin term meaning “wandering clergy” applied in early canon law to those clergy who led a wandering life either because they had no benefice or because they had deserted the church to which they had been attached.
The term refers also to wandering students, ex-students, and even professors, “moving from town to town in search of learning and still more of adventure, nominally clerks but leading often very unclerical lives”.[1]
Source: Clerici vagantes – Wikipedia