Anne, Aware That Elizabeth Would Soon Be Moved Out Of London, Would Not Let Her Out Of Her Sight. Placing

“Anne, aware that Elizabeth would soon be moved out of London, would not let her out of her sight. Placing her on the floor on a cushion, she spent hours watching her.”

— The Challenge of Anne Boleyn, Hester Chapman (via madamedepembroke)

On the evening of Sunday 11 February 1554 Jane Grey sat writing in the gentleman-gaoler’s house in the Tower of London. She was sixteen. Slightly built, “prettily shaped and graceful” but short enough to require platform shoes, Jane had brown eyes, hair nearly red, and a fair complexion with freckles. She was also frighteningly precocious; her scholarly reputation was talked of as far away as Zurich. But that evening she was not composing one of her elegant Latin missives to a foreign scholar. Jane was saying farewell. In twelve hours she would be dead, beheaded on the scaffold she had watched being built on the the other side of Tower Green. (Eric Ives, “Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery”)

Ella Hunt as Lady Jane Grey

Every Emma Connell moment as Anne Boleyn: 48/?

Detail of Sleeping Girl, 1620, by Domenico Fetti (1589-1623)

10 Lavishly Illustrated Medieval Haggadah Pages That Continue to Reveal Their Secrets  

“How does this book on Jewish manuscript illumination differ from all other such books?”  

Marc Michael Epstein could not resist posing the question in “Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Illuminated Manuscripts,”a sweeping, lavishly illustrated—and yes, illuminating—survey out this week from Princeton University Press.  

Nine scholars join Epstein in this innovative anthology of essays chronicling the history of these manuscripts—the Bible, the Haggadah, the prayer book, marriage documents, and other Jewish texts—from the middle ages to the present. 

The goal was to push beyond tradition and examine the manuscripts from a broader perspective, considering artistic style, iconography, narrative, cross-cultural borrowings and references.

One example is the enigmatic (so-called) Birds’ Head Haggadah, probably illuminated in Mainz around 1300—the earliest surviving example of the phenomenon of the obfuscation of the human face in such a manuscript.  

What are these strange beaked creatures? Tracing the imagery back to the cherubs on the Ark and the curtain of the Holy of Holies, Epstein explains why volume would be more accurately known as the Griffins’ Head Haggadah.

In the spirit of the season, here are 10 Haggadah pages discussed in this fascinating new book. 

1. “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.” The lower margin and central illustration depicts the slaving Israelites, while at top, a hare is served a drink by a dog, perhaps articulating the wish that “one day the Egyptian dogs will serve us.” The Barcelona Haggadah, Spain, ca. 1340. British Library, London.

2. Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh, rendered in a“primitive” style in the Hispano-Moresque Haggadah from Castile, Spain, ca.1300. British Library, London.

3. The Wise Child in a Haggadah illuminated by Nathan ben Abraham Speyer of Breslau. Silesia, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), 1768. National Library of Israel, Jerusalem. 

4. Armed Israelites crossing the Red Sea in the Rylands Haggadah, Catalonia,  Spain, mid and late 14th century. John Rylands University Library, Manchester.  

5. Israelites crossing the Red Sea in a Haggadah written and illustrated by Joseph Bar David of Leipnick, Moravia. Darmstadt, Germany, 1733. Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York.

6. The Ten Plagues in a Haggadah with the commentary of Abravanel, written and illustrated by Judah Pinḥas, Germany, 1747. Friedrich-Alexander Universistätsbibliothek, Erlangen-Nuremberg.

7. Maror, the bitter herbs (in the Brother Haggadah), Catalonia, Spain, third quarter of 14th century. British Library, London.

8. Disputing and frustrated figures populate a scene where women learn together and with men. First Darmstadt Haggadah. Middle Rhine, second quarter of the 15th century. Hessische Landes und Hochschulbibliothek, Darmstadt.

9. Israelites building store-cities for Pharaoh. Haggadah illustrated by Joseph Bar David of Leipnick, Moravia. Altona, Germany, 1740. British Library, London.

10. The Binding of Isaac in the manuscript traditionally known as the Birds’ Head Haggadah, Upper Rhine, Germany, ca. 1310. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Epstein argues that the volume should be called the Griffins’ Head Haggadah. 

“With the exception of Mary I, as far as the Tudor monarchy was concerned the Howards were very much a house of treason.” -- Robert Hutchinson

“  But what disquiets [Mary I] most of all is to see the eyes and hearts of the nation already fixed on this lady (sopra costei) as successor to the Crown, from despair of descent from the Queen, to whom the demonstration and the thought are by so much the more bitter and odious as it would be most grievous, not only to her but to any one to see the illegitimate child of a criminal who was punished as a public strumpet ...”

“ But yet worse treatment awaited her, for with very great indignity she had to serve as her mistress (come a patrona) a public strumpet (una publica meretrice), her father's concubine, that famous Anne Boleyn ...”

Unless Hutchinson thinks the “criminal punished as a public strumpet” is referring to Henry VIII.... lol.