Serious fun

You have seen your share of funny images from medieval times in this blog. When you browse books before print, either in online databases or for real, you are bound to encounter one sooner or later, either in the margins or attached to a capital letter. This particular manuscript, however, is fun all over. The decorator doodled a grumpy courtier and his jester in the lower margin (Pic 1), attached a face sticking out his tongue to a large letter (Pic 2), and placed a heart pierced by an arrow inside an initial (Pic 3). The most striking thing of all? The book in question was dead serious: it concerns a so-called Antiphonary, a book used by a choir in the church to sing from during the Holy Mass. Just today I encountered another one of these lovely contrasts (I tweeted it here). Apparently, doing a serious thing with a smile on your face was not uncommon in medieval times.

Pics: Vendôme, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 271 (more images and information here).