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Black Hours, Morgan MS 493 (wikipedia.org)
38 points by benbreen on Sept 5, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 11 comments



After this and that Gutenberg 42 line bible sub comment thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32711719, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible) - technically quite interesting! - are there any interesting ~medieval books that are not bibles/religious texts? Preferably with translations into somewhat modern English?


Froissart’s Chronicles, the lay of roland or any other chanson de geste, piers plowman, the canterbury tales, de rea metallica, on divers arts, gawain and the green knight, …

possibly too early, late, or religious: beowulf, the anglo-saxon chronicle, the chronicles of matthew paris, shakespeare…


Brilliant. This is going to take some time to go through, but after 20 minutes of Googling and reading bits and pieces it looks like pretty much exactly what I was thinking about.



oh, and of course https://www.pepysdiary.com/ which is also post-medieval, but great.


decameron is always a fun read.

the divine comedy too, but is religiously inspired, if not strictly religious.


> are there any interesting medieval books that are not bibles/religious texts

Yes. All of them.

The thing is that manuscripts were expensive. And fancy manuscripts with colors and drawings and gold leaf were even more expensive. That meant the required well-monied patrons. And often that meant the church. Or some noble intent on going to heaven who really needed a spendy book of hours to help get there.

There were others, though. Check this out: an early sort of graphic novel about Alexander the Great!

https://www.ekathimerini.com/culture/244349/exhibition-on-ra...



The Iceland Sagas (Egil’s Saga, etc) are worth reading


Any truth to the story that some monks would spend an entire year illuminating one letter?


TL;DR: Dark Mode in medieval times




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