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Blue Gems In Teeth Illuminate Women's Hidden Role In Medieval Manuscripts (abc.net.au)

Posted by BeauHD on from the lost-and-found dept.

brindafella writes: The jaw bone of a woman who died around 1000-1200 AD has specks of precious lapis lazuli (mineral) in the plaque of her teeth. This indicates that this woman would have licked the brush used in preparing precious illuminated manuscripts at the women's monastery in Dalheim in western Germany. The study by researchers from German-based Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and Britain's University of York showed that women, as well as men, were part of the production of the valuable manuscripts. "The researchers said this challenged long-held beliefs that women had played little role in the European Middle Ages in producing literary and written texts which came largely from religious institutions," reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "Researcher Christina Warinner said this finding from the 11th century was unprecedented in showing more women were literate, educated and encouraged to read at that time."

15 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Literate? by nagora · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't see why this implies literacy or even real education - many male monks were barely able to do more than copy what was in front of them and lots of priests in non-Italian countries could read out texts to their congregations without actually understanding Latin.

    Manuscripts were produced in production lines - does someone assembling radiator grills for Ford know how to design a car?

    --
    "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
    1. Re:Literate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Rather like "posting on Slashdot" implies "knowing what you're talking about".

    2. Re:Literate? by mentil · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Indeed. The Chinese Room thought experiment shows why copying text verbatim says nothing about comprehension of said text. Similarly, a photocopier doesn't understand the words and images it makes copies of.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    3. Re:Literate? by Freischutz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't see why this implies literacy or even real education - many male monks were barely able to do more than copy what was in front of them and lots of priests in non-Italian countries could read out texts to their congregations without actually understanding Latin.

      Manuscripts were produced in production lines - does someone assembling radiator grills for Ford know how to design a car?

      Uhhh... no. The church regularly cracked down on education and what they called ‘feral latin’ among the clergy. Bishops and commissions of scholarly monks conducted regular visitations in parishes to judge and report the state of affairs. Plus, lapis lazuli was imported from Afghanistan and was at times more valuable than gold so this woman was an illustrator of some very high end texts. What is important about this discovery is more than anything else that it constitutes proof of the fact that women, presumably nuns, as well as monks were involved in the production of the most splendid manuscripts of the time because nobody except a first rate illustrator would have something as obscenely expensive as lapis lazuli in their dental plaque.

    4. Re:Literate? by ilguido · · Score: 5, Informative

      What is important about this discovery is more than anything else that it constitutes proof of the fact that women, presumably nuns, as well as monks were involved in the production of the most splendid manuscripts of the time because nobody except a first rate illustrator would have something as obscenely expensive as lapis lazuli in their dental plaque.

      Which is already a well known fact since sometime they signed their works.

    5. Re:Literate? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's not "pure assumption". One of the reasons for the Carolingian Renaissance, for example, was the discovery by Charlemagne that his clergy knew shit (instead of knowing their shit).

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    6. Re:Literate? by nagora · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Manuscripts were produced in production lines - does someone assembling radiator grills for Ford know how to design a car?" = How do you know all this?

      Because I am literate.

      Monks were doing this into relatively recent times - it was a major source of income for many monasteries - and some of the workshop are still intact. In short, it wasn't a secret.

      --
      "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
    7. Re:Literate? by Freischutz · · Score: 5, Informative

      Uhhh... no. The church regularly cracked down on education and what they called ‘feral latin’ among the clergy. Bishops and commissions of scholarly monks conducted regular visitations in parishes to judge and report the state of affairs.

      They had to crack down on it because it existed. And of course they were 100% uncorruptable and diligent, like all clergy everywhere are renowned as being.

      Plus, lapis lazuli was imported from Afghanistan and was at times more valuable than gold so this woman was an illustrator of some very high end texts. What is important about this discovery is more than anything else that it constitutes proof of the fact that women, presumably nuns, as well as monks were involved in the production of the most splendid manuscripts of the time because nobody except a first rate illustrator would have something as obscenely expensive as lapis lazuli in their dental plaque.

      Sure. None of which has any bearing on literacy.

      It has a bearing on what TFA is about, I.e. that women were involved in the creation of some of the most exclusive illustrated manuscripts of the period, real masretmaster pieces like the Codex Aureus made for the emperor himself. When the radiator grill costs its weight in gold and the car the the grill is going into costs the yearly revenue of a whole county you do not let just any hack handle the assembly work. TFA made no claims about having proven that medieval women were literate. It has been well documented that women were literate since very ancient times. The literacy issue is a straw man you created. Also, I have read period documents written by clergy involved in visitations during the Middle Ages and these people took their work really seriously. Your completely unsubstantiated claim they all were corrupt is unfair. Ecclesiastical corruption did happen but it also regularly led to reform movements within the church and demands for reform among the civilian population. The biggest manifestation of this being the Protestant reformation.

    8. Re:Literate? by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Speaking of Chinese and copying, I've seen (fake) western antiques produced in China by people who were obviously unfamiliar with the western alphabet, in that they copied shapes of letters in things like latin inscriptions without knowing what the letters were. The result was sort of a Chinese tattoo fail in reverse.

      So yeah, you could get people copying manuscripts who had little or no education, as long as they had good artistic skills. My guess as to why they had women do it is that they're better at precision work, which is why they were employed as recently as a few decades ago to do things like string ferrite core memory, and a few decades before that to paint watch dials.

    9. Re: Literate? by Shaitan · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Most people still could not"

      I'm extremely skeptical about the implication that people know more about how cars work on average than people in the 70's, 80's, and even 90's... when everyone knew about and worked on cars or their dicks would fall off.

  2. Really? Impressive. by thesupraman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A woman in a woman's monastery wrote manuscripts? Who would have thought..

    "The researchers said this challenged long-held beliefs that women had played little role in the European Middle Ages in producing literary and written texts which came largely from religious institutions,"

    So the long help belief was that women's monasteries, which they obviously knew existed, just sat there twiddling their thumbs? I suspect people are projecting their modern biases pretty damn hard there. Back then life was hard, and it is pretty solid common sense that gender was much LESS of an issue, as survival was a little higher up the priority list.

    There would seem to be a lot of navel-gazing going on here, and very little common sense being applied, on both sides given that a few flecks on a single jawbone would hardly be statistically significant either.

    Doesn't stop them applying the spin cycle to it though it seems.
    "Researcher Christina Warinner said this finding from the 11th century was unprecedented in showing more women were literate, educated and encouraged to read at that time."

    All that from flecks in a single jawbone. Impressive(ly spun)

    1. Re:Really? Impressive. by ilguido · · Score: 4, Informative

      So the long help belief was that women's monasteries, which they obviously knew existed, just sat there twiddling their thumbs? I suspect people are projecting their modern biases pretty damn hard there. Back then life was hard, and it is pretty solid common sense that gender was much LESS of an issue, as survival was a little higher up the priority list.

      Really, I googled "women monasteries illuminated manuscripts" and I found a book from 2009 about the subject (fifth result, the four before that were all about this article). Its introduction reads: "Although the majority of scribes who can be affiliated with women’s monastic manuscripts were themselves, in fact, women monastics, a number of their male contemporaries also contributed to monastic manuscript holdings". So it is actually the other way around: we knew about women scribes.

      It is either (post)modern bias or just marketing ("look, we found something new, something none could believe"!) or probably both.

  3. Again women's contribution is being minimized. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Funny

    The evidence clearly indicates her to be the original blue tooth inventor. But, as usual, they demote her to be a mere copyist while some man will be credited with the "invention" of blue tooth.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:Again women's contribution is being minimized. by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Funny

      Pray excuse me. I meant "prioress art".

      I cannot _believe_ I failed to make that pun.

    2. Re:Again women's contribution is being minimized. by pjt33 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Sorry to spoil your chronology, but she postdates Harald Bluetooth.