Two of the arrows can be seen in the photo below, can you find them? Took a lot of searching and a sore neck to spot them from the ground!
Bologna has some 40km of porticos in total, since while the other Italian cities banned them, Bologna made them compulsory. A great idea of you ask me, as they provide shelter from the elements - the scorching sun in summer and the rain or snow in winter. If you stand under the oldest portico in Bologna you can find a hidden secret - the story of the three arrows. Two of the arrows can be seen in the photo below, can you find them? Took a lot of searching and a sore neck to spot them from the ground!
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What happens when you visit a printing city with a publisher? You visit a printing museum of course! We spent our day in Antwerp at the wonderful Museum Plantin-Moretus, a beautiful mix of the renaissance and baroque. Here we got to see two of the oldest printing presses in the world, the original lead fonts such as Garamond, and ancient manuscripts telling the story of how writing evolved into the art of printing. It is easy to see why this is the only museum in the world to be recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site, The museum is housed in the original residences and workshops of the Plantin and Moretus publishing family. In his early career Christophe Plantin worked in various places, but by the late 1570s his success as a printer was pushing his business to the limits and he purchased the first building on the current site. Over his life Plantin added to the complex, as did the successive owners over the centuries. Christophe Plantin was a true entrepreneur and not only ran a printing business, but also sold maps, prints, globes, and lace. Running such a big empire wasn't easy, and so it grew to include the whole family. His daughters learnt to read and write from a very young age, and were even helping in the print shop from the age of five! Due to the wide range of texts printed by Plantin, their education included Greek and Latin. After his death his daughter Martina and son-in-law Jan Moretus took over the Antwerp shop, and their descendants kept the site until it was sold to the city in 1877. One of his other daughters, Margaretha, married Franciscus Raphelengius and they inherited the Leiden branch. One of their descendants founded what would become the Brill Publishers, which is still in existence today. Highlights The Gutenberg Bible - The ‘36-line Gutenberg Bible’ is named after the number of printed lines per column. It was the second Bible to have been printed in Europe and is the oldest printed work in Belgian. This work, printed with Johannes Gutenberg’s original type, goes back to the very beginnings of the printing revolution. This particular copy traces its origins to the Augustinian monastery of Nuremberg. In 1514 it was donated to its new sister monastery in Antwerp, which closed in 1522 because of Lutheran sympathies. It is unsure how it ended up in Plantin’s library. The Biblia Polyglotta - Plantin worked on this scholarly masterpiece from 1568 to 1578. Consisting of eight volumes (four Old Testament, one New Testament, and three commentaries), the Biblical text itself was printed in five languages: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean (Aramaic) and Syriac. The World's Two Oldest Printing Presses - The invention of printing in the fifteenth century brought about a cultural revolution that shook Europe and changed its political and cultural landscape forever. These two printing presses were built around 1600. The Funerary Procession of Emperor Charles V - When Charles V died in 1558 his son was living in the Netherlands and so he organised a procession along the streets of Brussels in honour of his father. This 12 meter work is sold as a book or roll across Europe in the languages of the empire: French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, and German. Even though Plantin gained the commission to print the short text only, this established his reputation as a publisher.
On this day in 1502 the first peace treaty between England and Scotland was signed in over 170 years, the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, and in a way it did lead to a peace of some sorts - the unification of the two crowns. Part of the treaty was a marriage agreement between James IV, who was 27 years old, and Margaret Tudor, the 12 year old daughter of Henry VII of England.
A century later it was through her bloodline that the Stuarts succeeded to the English throne, marking the end of the Tudor dynasty and uniting the two countries. In the archives of the College of Arms are three artefacts linked to this famous battle between the English and Scottish - a sword and dagger, and a ring. In 1681 these were deposited by the 6th Duke of Norfolk and it was claimed by him that these were 'the very Sword and dagger and a gold ring set with a Turquoise Stone which his Ancestor the Duke of Norfolk took from James the 4th, King of Scotland, at the Battle of Flodden Field, where the said King was slain.' (http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/about-us/sword-and-dagger).
Whilst researching for Norwich in 100 Dates I came across a sweet Norfolk tradition born, it would seem, during the nineteenth century - Jack Valentine.
On Valentine’s Eve Jack Valentine was known to travel from doorstep to doorstep, leaving gifts in his wake. In this way lovers would exchange presents, and parents would leave gifts for children. The lucky recipient would hear a rat-tat-tat on the door, and when they opened it the mysterious “Jack” would have disappeared into thin air, leaving behind a surprise. On a rather more cruel note, Snatch Valentine was also known to make an appearance. If you were visited by this character when you reached for the present it would leap away from you as the hidden perpetrator tugged a piece of string attached to it, snatching your present away.
Last year I was asked to be Anne Boleyn for Blickling Hall's special evening with Neil Storey. You can see the report made by ITV for 2014 below:
http://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2014-05-20/spook-spotters-turn-out-to-see-anne-boleyns-ghost/ ...every able bodied man on feast days [including Sundays] when he has leisure shall in his sports use bows and arrows, pellets or bolts, and shall learn and practise the art of shooting, forbidding all and singular on pain of imprisonment to attend or meddle with hurling of stones, loggats, or quoits, handball, football, club ball, cambuc, cock fighting or other vain games of no value; as the people of the realm, noble and simple, used heretofore to practise the said art in their sports, whence by God's help came forth honour to the kingdom and advantage to the king in his actions of war, and now the said art is almost wholly disused, and the people indulge in the games aforesaid and other dishonest and unthrifty games, whereby the realm is like to be kept without archers. - Quoted in 'The Longbow' by Mike Loades
Almost 500 years later a charming picture of Queen Victoria out shooting begins a nineteenth century book on the history of archery (click here to view it). |
AuthorAn adventure loving historian with a soft spot for armour and motorbikes. Archives
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