Scribal Terror

That's a nef

 

But what, you may ask, the hell is it? According to Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages,

The silver ship was commonly an immense piece of plate, containing the napkin, goblet, and knife and spoon of the host, besides being the receptacle for the spices and salt. Through fear of poison, the precaution was taken of keeping it covered. This ship was often known as the "nef," and frequently had a name, as if it were the family yacht! One is recorded as having been named the "Tyger," while a nef belonging to the Duke of Orleans was called the "Porquepy," meaning porcupine.

When a nef held salt,  it was used to determine where diners were placed: honored guests above the salt, poor relations and retainers below the salt.

The word nef  is  Middle French for ship. (The modern French descendant is navire.) As a word for the table ornament, it was never fully naturalized into English, but an alternative meaning did develop into a common English word -- nave, as in the nave of a church:

Architecturally the central, open space  of a church, west of the choir or chancel, and separated therefrom by a low wall or screen.  . . .  Colloquially, the term is used to indicate that portion of a church reserved for worshippers . . . .  The name is derived from the Latin navis [via Middle French nef -- gh], a ship, possibly with some reference to the "ship of St. Peter" or the Ark of Noah .

How to make a drinker loathe wine

Let three or four live Eels, put into the Wine, stay there till they die.  Let one drink of this Wine, who is given to Drunkenness, and he will loath Wine, and always hate it, and will never drink it again.  Or if he do, he will drink but little, and with much Sobriety. Another way. Wash a Tortois with Wine a good while, and give one of that Wine to drink privately, half a cupful every morning for three days, and you shall see a wonderful virtue. . . . When one complained before the King of the Indians, that he had sons born to him, but when once they began to drink a little Wine, they all died. Jarchus answered him thus. It is better for them that they died, for had they lived, they would have all run mad, because they were begot of seed that was too cold. Therefore your children must abstain from Wine, so that they may not so much desire it. Wherefore if you have any more sons born, observe this rule. See where an Owl lays her Eggs, and boil her Eggs rare, and give them your child to eat. if the child eats them before he drinks Wine, he will always hate it, and live sober, because his natural heat is made more temperate. Philostratus, in the life of Apollonius. Democritus says, the desire of Wine is abolished, with the watery juice that runs from vines pruned, if you give it a Drunkard who knows not of it. -- John Baptist Porta (Giambattista della Porta, 1537-1615)

The illustration is from History for Kids

Veronica Franco, Courtesan (1546-1591)

"Other Women's Voices" on Veronica Franco:

In 1565, when she was about 20 years old, Veronica Franco   was listed in Il Catalogo di tutte le principale et piu honorate cortigiane di Venezia, which gave the names, addresses, and   fees of Venice's most prominent prostitutes; her mother was listed   as the person to whom the fee should be paid. From extant records,   we know that by the time she was 18, Franco had been briefly   married and had given birth to her first child; she would eventually   have six children, three of whom died in infancy.

As one of the piu honorate cortigiane in a wealthy and cosmopolitan city, Franco lived well for much of her working   life, but without the automatic protection accorded to "respectable"   women. She had to make her own way. She studied and she sought   patrons among the learned. By the 1570s, she was part of one   of the more prestigious literary circles of the city, participating   in discussions and contributing to and editing anthologies of   poetry.

In 1575 Franco's own volume was published, Terze rime, containing 18 capitoli (verse epistles) by her and   7 by men writing in her praise. That same year saw the start   of plague in Venice, which lasted two years, causing Franco to leave the city for a while and to lose many of her possessions.   In 1577 she unsuccessfully proposed to the city council that   it establish a home for poor women, of which she would become   administrator. By then she was raising not only her own children but also nephews who had been orphaned by the plague.

In 1580, Franco published her Lettere familiari a diversi,   "letters written in my youth," which included   50 letters, as well as two sonnets addressed to King Henri III   of France, who had visited her six years before. We have little   information for the period after 1580. Records suggest that she   was less prosperous in her later years but not living in poverty;   however, no more writing of hers appeared.

The portrait is by Tintoretto, and yes, that's a nipple. In a sixteenth or seventeenth century portrait, one nipple is considered modest, two are a bit more daring. I intend to make today Nipple Day at Scribal Terror.

Is that a zibellino you're wearing?

A while back, I linked this portrait of an Elizabethan lady (by William Segar c. 1595), commenting in an off-handed sort of way that she seemed to be clutching a dead monkey by the neck. Well, it's definitely dead, but it isn't a monkey, as a knowledgeable reader has pointed out. Stephen G. from Australia informs me that the animal is probably a "fur tippett," a clothing accessory made from animal fur or, in this case, from an entire dead animal,  probably a marten or a sable, its head and paws replaced by gold forms and encrusted with jewels.

Accessories of this sort were sixteenth-century fashion statements known as zibellini (sing. zibellino):

 

Waldseemuller map

An early world map by Martin Waldseemuller (1507) offers an interesting perspective on the New World as seen from the Old. Of special interest, as Bioephemera observes,  is "the existence of the Pacific Ocean":

The Pacific appears on no other maps of the time. Clearly Waldseemuller had little data on it - compare the featureless western shore of South America to the eastern side's fringe of calligraphic names. Balboa and Magellan hadn't even been there yet!

The map is in the collection of the  Library of Congress.

The truth about Tycho

The sixteenth century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, a friend of Johannes Kepler, died in Prague on October 24, 1601. Most people who know a bit of the voluminous gossip about this extremely odd man think they know what he died of: he was too polite to leave a banquet to urinate, and as a result his bladder burst. Hair analysis has proved, however, that he really died of mercury poisoning. Apparently, he ingested mercury the day before he died in an attempt to cure himself of a urinary disorder.  However, Tycho did in fact have a pet moose, which died when it got drunk and fell down the stairs; a fortune-telling dwarf named Jepp; and a metal nose.

How to make a drinker "loathe" wine

Let three or four live Eels, put into the Wine, stay there till they die.  Let one drink of this Wine, who is given to Drunkenness, and he will loath Wine, and always hate it, and will never drink it again.  Or if he do, he will drink but little, and with much Sobriety. Another way. Wash a Tortois with Wine a good while, and give one of that Wine to drink privately, half a cupful every morning for three days, and you shall see a wonderful virtue. . . . When one complained before the King of the Indians, that he had sons born to him, but when once they began to drink a little Wine, they all died. Jarchus answered him thus. It is better for them that they died, for had they lived, they would have all run mad, because they were begot of seed that was too cold. Therefore your children must abstain from Wine, so that they may not so much desire it. Wherefore if you have any more sons born, observe this rule. See where an Owl lays her Eggs, and boil her Eggs rare, and give them your child to eat. if the child eats them before he drinks Wine, he will always hate it, and live sober, because his natural heat is made more temperate. Philostratus, in the life of Apollonius. Democritus says, the desire of Wine is abolished, with the watery juice that runs from vines pruned, if you give it a Drunkard who knows not of it. -- John Baptist Porta (Giambattista della Porta, 1537-1615)

The eel photo comes from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute

On the exigencies of fashion

 

Or, the more things change, the more they remain the same, as William Harrison testifies from the Elizabethan vantage point of 1577:

The phantastical folly of our nation (even from the courtier to the carter) is such that no form of apparel liketh us longer than the first garment is in the wearing, if it continue so long, and be not laid aside to receive some other trinket newly devised by the fickle-headed tailors, who covet to have several tricks in cutting, thereby to draw fond customers to more expense of money.

The golem of Prague

Curious Expeditions has come across the grave of Rabbi Judah Lew ben Bezalel, called the "Maharal," creator of the golem of Prague:

In 1580 the Jewish community was under attack, and was about to be accused of a ritual child murder, a common way a arousing public hatred against Jews and inciting a mob to anti-Jewish violence. It was also an excuse often used to expel the entire Jewish community from a city. Worried, the Maharal asked God what to do. That night in his dreams he was given instructions on how to create a Golem: a creature made of clay.

Even for the holiest of men creating life is forbidden by Jewish law, but in this case an exception was to be made. The task would be a dangerous one. He was to use the "Shem Hameforash", the true name of God, a word so powerful that it could easily kill its speaker. After purifying himself, the Maharal went to the river, and by torchlight sculpted a giant body out of the river clay. After performing the complicated rituals from his dream, he wrote the word Emet, meaning God's truth, across the muddy forehead. The Golem's fiery eyes snapped opened to his master.

The Golem is soulless and unintelligent, a brute enforcer. It is said the Golem successfully defended the Jewish community against its aggressors, but that as it grew larger and larger it began attacking Gentiles and terrifying Prague. In some tales the Golem turns even on the Jews and its own creator. Eventually the Maharal was forced to destroy the creature by wiping off the first letter written on its forehead, changing the word from Emet, or God's truth, to the word Met or death. However the body of the Golem was to be stored in the attic of the Synagogue in Prague. Perhaps the Golem still resides there today, waiting for the word, waiting to be summoned.

The illustration is from  Zwoje Scrolls

"On the Training of Children"

A woodcut by Albrecht Durer, one of many used to illustrate Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools (1494):

In 1494, humanist Sebastian Brant published Das Narrenschiff, or The Ship of Fools, a long, moralistic poem written in the German language. Born in Strasbourg, Germany circa 1457, Brant earned degrees in philosopy and law at the University of Basel, then continued there as a lecturer. He wrote a law textbook and several poems prior to Das Narrenschiff, as well as editing books and broadsides for local printers. . . .

In Das Narrenschiff, Brant describes 110 assorted follies and vices, each undertaken by a different fool, devoting chapters to such offenses as Arrogance Toward God, Marrying for Money, and Noise in Church. Some of the chapters are united by the common theme of a ship which will bear the assembled fools to Narragonia, the island of fools. Das Narrenschiff proved so popular that it went through multiple editions, and was translated into Latin, French, English, Dutch, and Low German.

Brant's message was enhanced by a set of stunning woodcuts, most of them believed to have been carved by a young Albrecht Dürer during a short stay in Basel in 1494. Each woodcut illustrates a chapter from Das Narrenschiff, giving either a literal or allegorical interpretation of that particular sin or vice. Most of them feature a fool in a foolscap decorated with bells engaging in the activity being ridiculed. Dürer's detailed backgrounds show interiors furnished with slanted desks and diamond-paned windows, and hilly landscapes dotted with rocks and plants. Additional woodcuts are the work of the Haintz-Nar-Meister, the Gnad-Her-Meister, and two anonymous artists.

The work can be seen in its entirety at the Stultifera Navis web site, created by Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries