A Nice Chicken I Encountered In The Margins Of A Haggadah, The Ashkenazi Haggadah, With Commentaries

A nice chicken I encountered in the margins of a Haggadah, the ‘Ashkenazi Haggadah,’ with commentaries attributed to Eleazar Ben Judah of Worms, c. 1430.

The British Library

“There are two myths about the Mary Rose: the first is she sunk on her maiden voyage, the second is she was named after Henry VIII’s youngest sister. The first is an injustice, simple to disprove. Henry’s Mary Rose put in thirty four years of active service after she was launched in 1511. While the clue to the real origins of her name can be found in the fact that the Mary Rose was built at the same time as the ship Peter Pomegranate. The rose and the pomegranate were the emblems of the Henry and his new wife Katherine of Aragon the names Peter and Mary are likely to have been allusions to the saints.”

— A Journey Through Tudor England, Suzannah Limpscomb

hand of henry viii

itaglio facsimile of a letter written by king henry viii. plate between pages 60 & 61 of the 1945, houghton mifflin edition of The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey; book designed by bruce rogers & printed at the riverside press, cambridge, mass.

On this day, March 31st, 1547, François Ier, died in Rambouillet from septicemia. The King of France had been heavily depressed since the early demise of his youngest son, Charles, in 1545, and the remaining two years of his life were spent fighting recurring bouts of illness. His death, which followed that of Henry VIII in January 1547, profoundly changed the political scene in Europe.

“With the exception of Mary I, as far as the Tudor monarchy was concerned the Howards were very much a house of treason.” -- Robert Hutchinson

“  But what disquiets [Mary I] most of all is to see the eyes and hearts of the nation already fixed on this lady (sopra costei) as successor to the Crown, from despair of descent from the Queen, to whom the demonstration and the thought are by so much the more bitter and odious as it would be most grievous, not only to her but to any one to see the illegitimate child of a criminal who was punished as a public strumpet ...”

“ But yet worse treatment awaited her, for with very great indignity she had to serve as her mistress (come a patrona) a public strumpet (una publica meretrice), her father's concubine, that famous Anne Boleyn ...”

Unless Hutchinson thinks the “criminal punished as a public strumpet” is referring to Henry VIII.... lol.

St Cecilia, 1606, Guido Reni

Medium: oil,canvas