Mediaeval people read dirty books

Recent research by Dr. Rudy of the Art History Department has found that we can discover the ‘inner thoughts of our ancestors’ – through how filthy the pages of mediaeval texts are.

A ‘densitometer’ (dirt-measurer) can indicate which pages in a mediaeval book were most smudged by dirty fingers, left open to be covered with dust, and/or stained by spilt drinks. One measurement found more grime on pages containing prayers for personal salvation than on the pages which contain more selfless appeals. A prayer to the martyred St Sebastian, whose arrow wounds resembled the bubonic plague, appears to have been repeatedly thumbed by the grubby hands of a plague-fearing reader (though we’re assuming that the disease terrified most people).

Dr. Rudy urges us to imagine the nodding heads of mediaeval readers who (somewhat impiously) fell asleep whilst reading their daybreak prayers. We’ve all seen that guy, whose head keeps lolling about in the middle of a lecture, or worse still, that poor student in a tutorial whose elbow falls off the table, jolting them awake. Well, Medieval society was not that different from ours after all: there is a certain point in a sequence of ‘small hour prayers’ where the filth on pages lessens… and stops. Apparently they struggled to stay awake past prayer 4.

We all love the olden days and now we can understand people of the mediaeval period better than we did before. We know they cared more about themselves than others; they fell asleep while performing serious duties and were pretty butterz about hygiene. Can someone get me some hand sanitizer, please?

Photos © St. Andrews; twylah.com