The suffering middle ages. What suffers "Suffering Middle Ages. Lawyers in the Middle Ages were big entertainers

The “Suffering Middle Ages” project appeared in 2012 as a joke of history students and gained immense popularity. Hundreds of thousands of subscribers on Vkontakte and Facebook, numerous imitators, and very soon the first book based on community materials is coming out of print! Pre-order is already open in the country's online bookstores.

On the eve of the release of The Suffering Middle Ages on paper, Konstantin Meftakhudinov, one of the founding fathers of the project, gave an interview to the Russian Blogger.

Konstantin, thank you for agreeing to talk with us. Tell me, what is the Middle Ages for you? Profession, hobby, passion? Maybe business?

When it started, it is clear that we did not think about any business. It was pure passion, a hobby that has not gone away to this day.

Thank you for that! Now you have 300,000 subscribers on Vkontakte and almost 140,000 on Facebook. Are you recognized on the streets?

No, not on the streets.

I think you still have everything ahead of you. Necessarily.

I don't even know if I'm hoping or afraid.

Konstantin, what do you, as a historian, think about the medieval period? He has a very bad reputation. We call it the dark times, when everyone was sick with the plague, and people were burned at the stake. Was it really the darkest period in human history?

There are two myths about the Middle Ages. Someone thinks, as you described, that it was a dark thing when you live to 20 years old and die of the plague. And you have 15 children, half of whom will also die from the plague the day after tomorrow. At the same time, the myth of the dark Middle Ages was formed quite early, in the XV-XVI centuries, when the term "Middle Ages" was coined to describe the gap between antiquity and modern times. At the same time, most of the “witches” were burned in the 15th century, that is, in the era of the New Age, or the Renaissance, whatever. In the Middle Ages, the fires of the Inquisition did not burn as brightly as in modern times.

On the other hand, there is a myth about a beautiful time when beautiful knights ride to save beautiful princesses by killing beautiful dragons.

Both of these myths are very tenacious, and both do not quite accurately describe the era that was. The time was both beautiful and terrible at the same time. In general, everything is as it is now. Now, after all, there is also a lot of interesting things happening, and at the same time there are a lot of bad things.

Do you think there are many parallels between those times and our current reality?

Some historians do not express such an opinion on the pages of their monographs, but surreptitiously believe that the Middle Ages have not ended. And modern people are not much different from medieval people.

There are always parallels. When you see something similar, they appear by themselves. For example, the medieval image of the Trinity, which can be seen on the cover of our book, and the canonical image of the leaders of the communist world: Lenin, Marx, Engels. Sometimes, looking back, I want to say: “Well, what a wild Middle Ages around!”.

Many pictures from your public are funny even without a caption. Was it the artist's idea to make them like that, or did he honestly try to draw something beautiful, serious, pious, but what happened?

It depends. This is exactly what is written in our book. IN different occasions the artist wanted to depict different things. Sometimes he would draw some kind of evangelist apostle, and the result would be, for example, a wonderful picture where the lion says: yes, I am the king of beasts, but this, his mother, is a vacuum cleaner! That is, they in all seriousness could draw what we now may find funny.

On the other hand, it is clear that the Middle Ages also had humor, and they often drew pictures to laugh, not to die of boredom when reading some huge legal code. It was also some kind of entertainment for them.

Our legal codes, too, probably could use something funny sometimes.

Yes. In legal codes, creatures with huge genitals were often drawn. It would probably look good in some Civil Code.

Lawyers in the Middle Ages were big entertainers!

Then everyone was entertainers. At least those who could read and write. The time was like this.

There are very few Russian miniatures in your public. Why? Were ours more serious, or just painted less?

Firstly, in Rus' it was a little worse with paints. Then, very few medieval manuscripts from the territory came down to us. Ancient Rus'. Here are the fires that destroyed manuscripts both in the West and here, and the Mongol-Tatar invasion, which destroyed a very significant layer of books. Therefore, miniatures from Ancient Rus' have come down to us much less than from the West.

At the same time, it so happened that our public is focused more on Western Europe than, say, Byzantium. This is partly due to the fact that when we say "Middle Ages" we always imagine Notre Dame Cathedral rather than Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

Preparing for the interview, I found out that you now draw almost nothing yourself, but post what the participants send you.

Yes, our subscribers send us a lot of things, for which many thanks to them. But we ourselves, no, no, yes, and uncover Photoshop and do something like that.

How many contributors do you have? Are there permanent contributors?

Which of the medieval artists, in your opinion, best described the era? Everyone knows Bosch. And besides him?

The Middle Ages is very large and, frankly, it is difficult to single out one person. Firstly, the names of most of the miniaturists who just painted the manuscripts have not come down to us. If there are names, then these are later authors, and not just straight medieval guys. Guys, because women didn't draw very often, although one of them could be a scriptor - someone who rewrites manuscripts.

Of the artists we know greatest influence our community was rendered by Giotto. One of the first objects of our jokes was one of the angels from Jott's crucifixion, who, together with the Mother of God, mourns Jesus taken down from the cross. One of our classmates compared his face to ours when we have to get up at 7 am after going to bed at 5 to prepare for a seminar. He is really suffering.

That is, can we say that he gave a name to the public?

Partly, yes.

Were there workshops for making handwritten books in women's monasteries?

I am not an expert in this matter, but it seems there were. Rewriting books is one of the forms of obedience for monks, because at that time there were no photocopiers, of course. This also became a reason for jokes, however, in an English-speaking environment: a monk lies on the table, another one comes up to him and says: the printer is broken, bring another one.

So why not use women for this noble work? Moreover, very noble persons became abbesses of the monasteries: sisters of emperors, and so on. Very influential, very powerful ladies in the world were in charge of these monasteries. And in general, monasteries are a very important thing for the Middle Ages, a very important layer of culture was preserved thanks to these monasteries.

Returning to legal manuscripts, which I now cannot get out of my head. Was there censorship in the Middle Ages?

There was no censorship as such, because there was no body that could censor. In our country, the state is usually engaged in censorship, and a very interesting book historian Robert Darnton. It's called Censors at Work: How the State Shapes Literature.

There was no official censorship in the Middle Ages, but there were cases when, for example, in Byzantium, iconoclasts tried to scrape icons off the walls. During the religious wars, during the Reformation, the Protestants also destroyed icons, statues, and decoration of churches.

There was a case when a Catholic grandee got a book about Spain, and he began to black out some bad sentences about Spain and rewrite, supplementing with phrases about what wonderful country Spain. But this book was in his personal library, that is, this is not censorship in the full sense of the word.

But what about the persecution of heretical books? Everyone read in historical novels that even a comma placed in the wrong place already casts doubt on the postulates catholic faith. How was it?

Yes, there were a number of texts that seemed to the Holy See not that very suitable. For what, for example, they burned the same Giordano Bruno? Not because he claimed something about the Sun, but for a treatise on demonology. Moreover, he was several times offered to renounce his views, which were rather heretical and even modern people rather strange and crazy, but he did not agree. Bruno almost proclaimed himself the Son of God; It is clear that the Church did not like this very much. Therefore, his works began to be banned, and he himself was burned.

Who would have thought that according to Runet aggregator sites and Russian-language publics in in social networks medieval miniatures will spread. Or rather, macros made from them. As a rule, all these funny pictures come from one source - a public that is rapidly gaining subscribers on the VKontakte social network. "Suffering Middle Ages". Although, of course, it is almost never indicated: admins like to borrow content from each other and even mark the kidnapped Sabine women with their watermarks. After all, after that, the stolen image, as it were, becomes its own, native. A subscriber of several publics at once is regularly attacked by clones in the news feed. Often the same pictures are posted in several publics almost simultaneously.

Again, Navalny, a big fan of memes, signed up for updates.

For a provider of original images, such interest from those scouring for fresh content is still a sign of success. Not remembered in social networks - mentioned in articles about "the most entertaining new publics"; again, Navalny, a big fan of memes, signed up for updates. It is characteristic that with adme. en an article about the "Suffering Middle Ages" deleted after someone complained about insulting religious feelings. But this also became an additional “black PR” for the “Suffering Middle Ages”. The public is very capable of offending especially sensitive readers, because it mocks at many things. Here you and religious themes in a particularly rich assortment, and homosexuals, And nationalists. The list goes on. Comparisons with the legacy of "Monty Python" - which certainly irritate the creators of the "Suffering Middle Ages" - the public can not be avoided. And because it is a similar kind of cynicism and satire, which allowed the "Pytons" to roll in the bishops' carriages and make children from the family of an Irish Catholic sing in chorus « Every sperm is sacred» or crucified - hum « Always look on the bright side of life» . And because "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" remains one of the main examples of satirical medievalism. But the main thing is because the visual style of the crazy videos created by Terry Gilliam used the same medieval miniatures (as well as paintings by Botticelli, drawings by Blake etc. ) and turned to the plots of marginal drawings on the margins of manuscripts. A similar animation can be seen in the film cycle The Medieval Lives of Terry Jones, where a participant in the Monty Python show and a popular historian carefully destroyed stereotypes associated with medieval life.

However, in order to find the closest relatives of the "Suffering Middle Ages", it is not necessary to talk about "Monty Python" or the comic culture of the Middle Ages. Outside the RuNet, “medieval” memes and macros have long become commonplace. There are thematic blogs where they photoshop and animate medieval miniatures, for example, Scorpion Dagger. There are collections on aggregator sites like buzzfeed. There are groups in social networks. For example, Discarding images with a blog on Tumblr; the public and the group, apparently, are engaged in a medievalist from Poland. Other examples are more modest in terms of the number of subscribers Marginalia And Folia Magazine.

Apparently, the admins of the “Suffering Middle Ages” actively borrow source material from such communities (sometimes you can see how a macro appears in public the next day after uploading the original picture in another group). But the way the images are presented is very different. So, Discarding images limited to a text comment to the posted picture. And for the “Suffering Middle Ages” this is just one of the means used. To the credit of the "Suffering Middle Ages", the public does not present itself as something unique, for example, it provides links to similar English-language blogs. Yes, and he writes about his unexpected popularity not without sarcasm, accompanying this relevant illustrations. However, in this self-irony there is clearly a share of coquetry, and it also does not interfere with the sale of T-shirts with prints. And between the original macros from the miniatures fit clumsy collages and macros borrowed from the Internet, sometimes of venerable age. "Suffering Middle Ages" does not shun reproduce quite ancient, but popular network memes - for example, made on a long-standing site historical Tale construction Kit, where you can rivet macros using details of the tapestry from Bayeux.

It's Jupiter emasculating Saturn in a scene from Romance of the Rose, not just one creepy bearded dude cutting another's balls.

Although most of the images are Western European miniatures, sometimes they cannot do without Old Russian bracer or Orthodox images. There is no unity of the language either - there are both Russian and English signatures on the macros. Another fundamental difference"Suffering Middle Ages" from communities like Discarding images - no indication of the origin of the images and their actual content. And, judging by the regular requests in the comments, “Tell me the name of the original, plz,” subscribers would not hurt. Maybe they don't need to know what to

Before us is a fresco by Simone Martini "The Vision of St. Ambrose" from the chapel of St. Martin of Tours in Assisi. The Golden Legend, the most popular collection of instructive and fascinating stories in the Middle Ages, tells that one day Bishop Ambrose of Mediolan fell asleep on the altar during Mass, before reading the Scriptures. The servants for a long time did not dare to wake him up, and the deacon did not dare to read without his blessing. After some time, the bishop was nevertheless awakened, saying: “Lord, an hour has passed, and the people are very tired, and therefore they led the minister to read the Epistle.” He answered them: “Do not be angry. For Martin, my brother, departed to the Lord, but I served a funeral mass for him and could not leave it without finishing the last prayer, although you so cruelly hurried me.

This is a miniature "The Conception of Alexander the Great" from the "History of Alexander the Great of Macedon" by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus in the famous edition of 1468-1475. According to a legend that became widespread after the death of Alexander and asserted his veneration as a supernatural being, his real father was not the Macedonian king Philip II, but Pharaoh Nectaneb, the last ruler of Egypt. According to ancient Egyptian ideas, the heir of the pharaoh is born from the union of the queen with the god Amun, who appears to her in the guise of the ruling pharaoh. In late antique literature, this motif was reinterpreted in the spirit of an adventure novel: Nectaneb was portrayed as a magician and swindler who changed his appearance in order to seduce the queen. This complex intrigue is depicted on the miniature with the conventionality inherent in this kind of iconography. Before us is a double duality: the double of the pharaoh is, firstly, Philip, who recognized the divine child (therefore, he is present in the scene of conception), and secondly, the demon-Amon (an Egyptian deity for a medieval author is certainly a demon).

This is a miniature from a 13th-century bestiary depicting an asp-charmer. Any aspid can be called poisonous snake, however, in the bestiaries of the late XII - XIII centuries, he was usually depicted as winged and eared. To neutralize the asp, you need to lure him out of the hole, and for this you need to cast a spell or play the flute. Hearing these sounds, the asp presses one ear to the ground, and plugs the other with its tail. In this way, he is likened to a rich man who turns one ear to earthly blessings, and plugs the other with sin. In the 57th psalm, it says on this occasion: “Their poison is like the poison of a snake, like a deaf asp that plugs its ears” (Ps. 57:5). In medieval bestiaries, the asp also becomes the personification of hell conquered by Christ, according to the words of the 90th psalm: “You will step on the asp and the basilisk; you will trample on the lion and the dragon” (Ps. 90:13).

This is the initial to the 13th psalm from the Psalter of Queen Ingeborg (France, c. 1200). It begins with "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Ps. 13:1). These words, whispered by two demons into the ear of a madman, are written on his scroll. Another version of the illustrations of the same psalm is a madman running with a mallet and a piece of bread in his hands, in accordance with the words “Surely all those who do iniquity, who eat my people as they eat bread, will not understand” (Ps. 13:4).

It depicts St. Francis of Assisi, who lived in Italy at the beginning of the 13th century and became famous, among other things, for receiving stigmata (wounds similar to those of Christ) when he fervently prayed and meditated on the Passion of Christ. His vision is described differently in different versions of his life: in some, St. Francis sees a crucified, suffering cherub; in officially accepted version the crucified Christ himself appears to him with the wings of a cherub. This is part of a 15th-century polyptych depicting Saint Francis, showing the stigmata on his arms, legs and chest, next to the Archangel Michael slaying a dragon. This type of composition, in which saints from different eras stand together before Christ or the Mother of God, is called "holy conversation."

This miniature from a 13th-century bestiary depicts an eagle owl being attacked by diurnal birds. Owl is “very lazy” and spends days and nights in tombs and caves, which gives Hraban Mavr, the author of the encyclopedic work “On the Nature of Things”, a reason to compare him with sinners who love the darkness of sin and flee from the light of truth. At daylight the owl goes blind and becomes helpless. Therefore, when they see him, the daytime birds emit loud cries, calling their comrades, and together they rush at him, pull out his feathers and peck him. So the sinner, having fallen into the light of truth, would become a laughingstock for virtuous people and, being caught in sin, would bring upon himself a hail of reproaches.

Here is a fresco from the Roman catacombs of the 4th century. It depicts the story described in the Book of Numbers (22-25). The soothsayer Balaam rides on his donkey in order to curse the Jewish people by order of the king of the Moabites, Balak. An angel with a sword blocks his way. Balaam himself does not see the angel, but he is seen by the donkey, who tries in every possible way to stop the unsuspecting soothsayer and eventually begins to speak. Hence the saying "Valaam's ass has spoken."

This is a tapestry "Sight" from the cycle "Five Senses", also called "Lady with a Unicorn" (end of the 15th century). It is kept in the Cluny Museum in Paris. The unicorn here symbolizes purity and fidelity - thanks to the story of the bestiary that a unicorn can be caught only by bringing a virgin into the forest. Attracted by her purity, the unicorn puts his head on her knees and falls asleep - and then the hunters can take possession of him. The image of the unicorn becomes a symbol of Christ, and the virgin - the Church and the Virgin Mary herself. Thus, the composition "Catching the Unicorn" can mean the mystical marriage of Christ and the Church. In the courtly version, the unicorn is a lover, attracted by the purity and beauty of his beloved.

This is the central part of the polyptych for the altarpiece of the hospital chapel in Beaune by Rogier van der Weyden (1443-1452), dedicated to the Last Judgment. Archangel Michael is depicted here, weighing the good and evil deeds of a man who appeared before the judgment of the Almighty. This plot is usually called "weighing of the soul", although in reality it is not the soul that is weighed, but its deeds. Around - trumpeting angels, heralding the onset of the end of the world. This type of composition is also known in the images of the Court in ancient Egyptian art - there Osiris acts as a weigher.
Biblical sources are the words from the Book of Job (“So let He weigh me on the right balance, and God will know my innocence”, Job. 31:6), the Book of the prophet Daniel (“Tekel - you are weighed on the scales and found very light”, Dan 5:27), Book of Proverbs of Solomon (“ Faithful scales and weighing bowls are from the Lord; from Him all the weights are in the bag”, Prov. 16:11) and others. Special significance for iconography doomsday in the art of the XIV-XV centuries, there was the fact that Vincent of Beauvais (1190-1264), the author of The Great Mirror, one of the most famous medieval encyclopedias, quoted the words of John Chrysostom about good and bad deeds that will be placed on the scales.