MessageToEagle.com -
Many have a low opinion of people who lived in mediaeval times.
We often consider our ancestors primitive and uneducated.
Recent studies give us a unique opportunity to reveal the inner thoughts of our ancestors, and many of us will be surprised to learn how little humans
have changed over the years.
Modern technological breakthroughs do not change the fact that most people of today are still just as self-interested,
and afraid of illness as our mediaeval ancestors were.
It is possible to get into the medieval minds through their dirty books.
A new technique invented by Dr. Kathryn Rudy, lecturer in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews, can measure which pages in
mediaeval manuscripts are the dirtiest, and therefore, the most read.
A machine called a densitometer allows the dirt contained within the pages of books centuries old to reveal the inner thoughts of our ancestors.
The ground-breaking research has even managed to pinpoint the moment that people fell asleep reading the same book.
A densitometer. Image credit: niversity of St Andrews
For example one of the dirtiest pages in a selection of European religious books was a prayer to St Sebastian who was often prayed to because
his arrow-wounds (the cause of his martyrdom) looked like the bubonic plague.
This shows us that the reader of the book was terrified of the plague and repeated the prayer to ward off the disease.
Similarly pages which contained the prayers for the salvation of others were less dirty than those asking for salvation for oneself.
As well as demonstrating mediaeval people prayed for their own assistance, the analysis showed the pages of a prayer to be said in the small
hours of the morning were only dirty for the first few pages.
Dr. Rudy's extrapolates that it shows most readers fell asleep at the same point.
She said: "Although it is often difficult to study the habits, private rituals and emotional states of people, this
new technique can let us into the minds of people from the past.
"Religion was inseparable from physical health, time management, and interpersonal relationships in mediaeval times.
In the century before printing, people ordered tens of thousands of prayer books-sometimes quite beautifully illuminated
ones-even thought they might cost as much as a house.
"As a result they were treasured, read several times a day at key prayer times, and through analysing how dirty the pages
are we can identify the priorities and beliefs of their owners."
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