Thought Portal

The Decameron

Why is everyone reading The Decameron? https://www.vogue.com/article/why-is-everyone-reading-the-decameron

The Decameron web https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/

An intro to the Decameron https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/07/magazine/what-is-the-decameron.html

The Decameron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decameron

The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23700

Was the tale of Hansel and Gretel inspired by a real crime in German history? It would make for a great story, if it were true. This week’s episode comes from the podcast Cautionary Tales, where host Tim Harford looks at how misinformation can cast a spell on us like a fairy tale, and he connects the dots from The Brothers Grimm to The Coen Brothers.

poverty and capitalism

A marginal note written in Latin and buried deep within one of the 16 heavy registers used by to record the business of the archbishops of York between 1304 and 1405 first alerted archivists to the adventures of the runaway nun. “To warn Joan of Leeds, lately nun of the house of St Clement by York, that she should return to her house,” runs the note written by archbishop William Melton and dated to 1318.

After faking her own death, he continued, “and, in a cunning, nefarious manner … having turned her back on decency and the good of religion, seduced by indecency, she involved herself irreverently and perverted her path of life arrogantly to the way of carnal lust and away from poverty and obedience, and, having broken her vows and discarded the religious habit, she now wanders at large to the notorious peril to her soul and to the scandal of all of her order.”

“Being a priest was one of the most dangerous jobs in Europe during that time as they visited the sick and administered last rites at deathbeds,” said Rees Jones. “Because so many priests had died, there weren’t enough people trained in Latin, so delivering sermons in English had to be adopted as the new status quo. The registers may shed new light on what it was like to live through this period and will perhaps give us a sense of how the church reasserted its authority after such catastrophic events.”