Still Medieval After All These YearsAs

As I announced back in March, I've been working on a new book, and now it's out!  It's called "Still Medieval After All These Years," and it started life with this blog.

 The book's purpose is to discuss some aspects of medieval society I never got to in my first so-called blog book, "Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages."

 

Specifically, I have much more to same about peasants, their status and opportunities, and about food and beverage.  (Did you know lasagna is probably a Norman dish? Introduced by them into Italy? No tomato sauce, though.). Then I go on to discuss how medieval buildings were built, how medieval people kept healthy, and a lot on the medieval church and religion.

But the newest aspect is a focus on how much modern society owes to the Middle Ages, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.  Even though we've decided we are "modern," the medieval keeps tempting us, including (strangely enough) notions that somehow life was better then and that we should be able to use the Middle Ages as a model for a racially and religiously pure society.  (Um, that's not going to work.) 

(I also talk about medieval-themed fantasy fiction. That aspect is fine.)

Anyway, the book is now available on Amazon, both as an ebook and a paperback.  Here's the paperback link.  (If you don't see both ebook and paperback, click "see all formats" next to the title.). It will shortly be available on all major ebook platforms and will be able to be ordered through any bookstore. 

The ebook has color pictures if you read on a computer or tablet, black and white on a Kindle or as a paperback.  They're all my photos, so you get in effect a travelogue as well as social history. Hope you enjoy!

© C. Dale Brittain 2026 

Marginalia

Medieval manuscripts, pre-printing press, naturally were all hand written and hand illustrated. Sometimes someone with artistic ability would just take an initial letter and make it fancy.

 

But often, for a high-class book, there would be actual illustrations. Most of these illustrations were something to do with the text itself. So the initial letter of one of the prophetic books of the Bible (like Isaiah for example) might include both the letter itself and a picture of a prophet with his long beard.

This wasn't enough for some illuminators (as they were called, the artists illustrating a book). They would do their appropriate illustrations, but then they would add things in the margins that might have nothing to do with the actual text. Although they would usually refrain if illuminating an actual Bible, other books were not off-limits to marginalia.

These marginal illustrations were often witty, sometimes bawdy.  They might be a commentary on the society of their time. Rabbits frequently featured, portrayed for example as suited up in armor and jousting with other rabbits. Strange hybrid creatures sometimes appeared. Sometimes they were subtle or not so subtle digs at those in authority.

 

In the above image, a fox, wearing a bishop's mitre and carrying a bishop's staff, is preaching to his flock, quite literally a flock of birds, geese, swans, and other fowl that, presumably, the fox has intentions of eating. The birds seem quite attentive. There's a Dutch proverb that goes something like, "Watch your chickens when the fox preaches the gospel." A good warning indeed.

(The images above are, respectively, the second cartulary of Montier-en-Der from the thirteenth century, Archives de la Haute-Marne, 7 H 2; and from the fourteenth century, British Library Royal MS 10 E IV.)

© C. Dale Brittain 2026

For more on various aspects of life in the Middle Ages, see the ebook, Positively Medieval, available from Amazon and other major ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback!