It's been quite a few months since my last post, but 2017 has been an exceptionally busy year. The school I teach at has moved to a much larger campus, increasing our number of students and my duties as well. While I come on here pretty frequently and stare at my blog, I simply haven't had anything notable to add. Rather, I've been in an intense 'learning mode' this year. With October marking the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, I decided I needed to re-visit the writings of the Reformers (and not just read 'about' them as I have been in the past). I've made my way through many of the writings of Erasmus, More, Luther, Tyndale, and am soon moving on to Calvin. I hope to make some posts about Reformation writings in the near future, but for now I am simply ingesting all I can.
On a related note, here's a great post from Luther in Oxford on the three oldest prints of Martin Luther's 95 Theses. With the originals being lost to time, these sheets are probably the closest we'll ever get what Luther nailed to the church door in Wittenberg (if he ever actually did that!).
https://lutherinoxford.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/the-three-oldest-prints-of-martin-luthers-ninety-five-theses/
Happy Thanksgiving to anyone who peruses through here from time to time. I hope your holiday with family has been blessed. Now for a little bit of Bible history: The Geneva Bible has been grandly heralded as the 'Bible of the Pilgrims', which is very true. But - fun fact - the King James Version shown below also landed at Plymouth, owned by non-separatist Mayflower crewmember John Alden. This book now rests in Pilgrim Hall Museum in Massachusetts, alongside William Bradford's personal 1592 Geneva and several other Bibles. Pretty cool!
Compact Medieval books like the "Paris Pocket Bibles" have always fascinated me, and I hope to someday own a facsimile of one (though there are none currently, maybe I should make one...) In the meantime, I shall content myself with pleasant pictures, like the one the The Museum of the Bible posted today as their artifact of the day:
"An interesting little Artifact of the Day: English Pocket Bible from AD 1230-1250. Small “pocket” Bibles were one of the most important book production achievements in the 1200s. While Paris Pocket Bibles evolved in France, England was also an important center of production. English Pocket Bibles were much smaller, such as this one which measures just 4 ¾ inches in height.
The start of each chapter has a blue initial, which is distinctively English, compared to others which use both blue and red. Errors found in this manuscript, such as Ezekiel ending imperfectly with the end of Daniel instead, suggests this Bible was copied by more than one scribe."
Advertisements are something that effect us every single day, as our eyes and ears are constantly assaulted by ads on the internet, television, and radio. Some are worse than others (looking at you Carl's Jr., Go Daddy, and K-Love pledge drives), but give an ad a few hundred years and I will instantly devote my attention to it. Case in point, here are a couple Medieval/Renaissance era advertisements I've come across recently:
This 13th century bookstore advertisement would've been displayed outside the bookshop, with patrons looking over the various types of handwriting script available, in order to choose the one they wanted for the book they were ordering. (Similar to playing around with the fonts on Microsoft Word.) This sheet is from the shop of Herman Strepel in Munster, circa 1447.
Next we have an example of early 'spam', found on the last page of a privately owned manuscript. Here, a scribe named Herneis addresses the reader: "If someone else would like such a handsome book as this one, come and find me in Paris, across from Notre Dame cathedral." Scribal notes like these can frequently be found in texts towards the end of the Middle Ages, as book production became privatized - as opposed to being produced in monasteries and cloisters.
Lastly is the earliest known printed English book advertisement, at a business card-sized 80x146 mm. This was printed by England's first printer, William Caxton, and it proudly announced the availability of the freshly printed Sarum Ordinal. Where can a "spiritual" man purchase this "well and correct" liturgical manual? "Let him come to Westminster, in to the almonry at the Red Pale, and he shall have them good & cheap."
Most of these were found on the Tumblr of Erik Kwakkel, a Medieval book historian at Leiden University. You can see more of his terrific content at http://erikkwakkel.tumblr.com/
After a very long hiatus (of approximately 15+ months) I felt a longing to return to my blog. I've actually had numerous post ideas, and in fact have quite a few drafts sitting on the blog-burner. Unfortunately, whenever I got around to adding to them, I keep thinking "I could probably say what's in my head a better way tomorrow," and never went back to it. Time flies when you're a new husband! My wife and I have both had an extremely busy year, but God has richly blessed us in countless ways. In any case, I hope to start posting frequently - which honestly might only happen if I set a timer and agree that, after x amount of time, I will stop editing and just post what I wrote (since my personal editing process can be unending, as evidenced by several drafts that are more then two years old).
Life has been extraordinarily busy this summer, with events scheduled almost every single day. There's so much I could say about my the days and weeks of the past two months, but there are hardly enough time to do so. 13 hours from now I marry my gorgeous fiancee, and begin married life with her by my side. I'm beyond excited, and can't wait for that moment! Luckily, there has been some time for reflection, and as I await the excitement of the day's events, I came across this exceptional quote by Tertullian that I had to share.
Today in history, the Council of Nicea was convened in 325, and over the course of the next month, settled the issue of Christology and the relation of Jesus Christ the Son to God the Father (among its other accomplishments). The council also produced the famous Nicene Creed, one of the most enduring documents in all of Christian history.
Contrary to popular belief, the Council of Nicea had nothing to do with the canon of the Bible, nor with 'creating' Christianity (both of which are myths perpetuated by a certain Dan Brown book). It was here that the orthodox belief was officially upheld: that Christ was both 100% man and 100% God, and that the Son, while a separate 'person', was of the same substance as the Father. For an accurate and detailed description of the council in layman's terms, I highly recommend Paul Pavao's book Decoding Nicea (which, incidentally, was one of the books that steered me towards the Early Church).
I'll make a longer post on the Nicene Creed sometime soon, since it's the one I adhere to. However, I do believe that Christianity, while growing in size post-Nicea, has decreased in quality. The writings of the Early Church - the writings of the men who sat under the Apostles! - have been largely pushed aside by the Protestant and Evangelical circles. Perhaps the Council's anniversary is just the time to bring up an Early Church discussion with your Christian friends.
Yesterday, May 19th, marked the death date of one of my favourite historical figures, Alcuin of York. The English Medieval scholar was an educator who had a profound effect on the development of education and books during time of Charlemagne's Frankish Empire. From 782 to 790, he focused on transplanting a mixture of Celtic & Romano-British learning to mainland Europe. He founded the Carolingian palace library, for which he developed a small cursive script of characters called Carolingian Minuscule, which allowed more letter than ever before to be written on a single expensive page of parchment. Of great beauty, this script was later employed by the earliest printers. His hunger for learning revived the Augustinian tradition of Christian classical education and helped to lay the foundations of Europe's civilization of Christendom.
