HeadScape

erikkwakkel:

Entertainment in a medieval book

The margins of a medieval book are usually empty. This is handy, because it means you can place notes in them, or fill them with doodles, like here. In this particular case the reader decided to add spectacular illustrations to the margins. Not only do they show us snapshots of medieval individuals living their lives, which is special enough, the images are often also quite funny. Humour is not an unusual occurrence in such old books, as I showed here. However, to have this much fun in the margins is not very common.

Pics: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264 (14th c). Browse the entire manuscript here and start enjoying dozens more images.