An Asgardian Canon Table

        
          The prop masters/creators for the film Thor: The Dark World did an excellent job of creating impressive props and set pieces, but for me, one item clearly stands out from the rest. At one point in the film, Thor and Odin flip through a book describing the history of the Ether dark energy, and whose illustrations and illuminations pay homage to Medieval manuscripts from the Carolingian period. The top page in particular is an obvious copy of a Eusebian canon table - concordance-like reference material that was a staple of countless medieval Bibles and New Testaments. The book was clearly influenced by Codex Aureus of Lorsch (aka the "Lorsch Gospels"), a gospels manuscript whose beautiful illuminations and golden-inked cursive script still stand out to this day. (A canon table page from that manuscript is below.)

The Monk and the Concept of Eternity

          The following folktale is from the introduction to an article by Orlanda S.H. Lie, entitled The Concept of Time in the Medieval World View. The paper is very informative, but my favourite section is definitely the story at the beginning, poignantly illustrating what eternal life might be like. You can read the rest of the paper here: 
http://www.medievalists.net/2014/04/01/concept-time-medieval-world-view/

          Once upon a time a monk left his monastery for a walk in the cloister garden. He had often been pondering the meaning of eternity and heavenly bliss and had frequently  prayed to God, asking him for an illustration of one moment of heavenly bliss. All of a sudden he heard the lovely song of a little bird, perched on the branch of a tree. He stopped to listen and enjoyed his song until the bird flew away. When he returned to the monastery, he was greeted by a porter, whom he had never seen before. “Who are you?” the porter asked. “I am a monk of this monastery,” he answered. “I stepped out for a little walk in the garden.” But strangely enough, he couldn’t find anybody there who looked familiar to him. But not only the people seemed different, somehow the whole place had changed. The monk was utterly confused and did not know what to make of it. When they asked him who the abbot was of the monastery, and whether he could name some of his fellow-monks, he provided them with the names of people none of them knew.  Finally they decided to consult the annals of the monastery. To their amazement they discovered that the monk was referring to people who lived more than three hundred years ago. Moreover, there was also an entry that registered the strange disappearance of a monk who left the monastery one day and  never came back…  And at that moment the monk understood what had happened. This was God’s way of answering his prayer: the pleasure he derived from listening to the bird’s song was God’s way of giving him a foretaste of the timelessness of  heavenly bliss.  If  the beautiful song of this little bird was already enough to make him forgetful of the time, how intensely more pleasurable and  never-ending must then be the joy of heavenly bliss in the after life!

The Evangelists and Their Sources

Here's another interesting introductory document, The Evangelists and Their Sources by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons in the late 2nd century. Though some of the actual historicity of these statements may be debatable, this provides a concise and informative history of the Gospels and their authors from the proto-orthodox period:



"Matthew published his gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue [Aramaic], when Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel in Rome and founding the church there. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter's preaching. Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the gospel preached by his teacher. Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on his breast, himself produced his gospel, while he was living at Ephesus in Asia [Minor]. If anyone does not agree to these truths, he despises the companions of the Lord... He despises the Father also, and stands self-condemned, resisting and opposing his own salvation." [Against Heresies III:1:1]

Medieval Souvenirs

A company I follow on Facebook (18thcenturybibles.org) shared a really interesting web post by Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel. You can read more of Erik's interesting posts on his page: http://erikkwakkel.tumblr.com/
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"Thin pieces of metal that are bluntly attached to precious illuminated pages. It is not something you see every day in a medieval book - or imagined to see at all in such delicate objects. They are pilgrim’s badges, mementos purchased during pilgrimages to holy sites in medieval Europe. They are really not very different from the Eiffel Towers, baseball caps or Big Bens that we carry home in our suitcases today: they are mass-produced, cheap and highly portable souvenirs. If you went to see the shrine of St Thomas Becket, you would take a badge home, partly to show that you had been (like this one). The badges above are special because the pilgrim attached them to the pages of his prayerbook when he came home, which is how they survived. The shiny pieces of metal are religious instruments, of course, but they also proudly emphasize that the owner of the book went on a real pilgrimage: been there, done that!"