Search the Blog
Latest Comments
Guest - Katrin
Sprang Discussion
18 September 2026
Hi Rachel, I have looked for more photos of you, but that was not very successful. I found a link on...
Guest - Beatrix
Sprang Discussion
15 September 2026
That lozenge pattern element is not a photograph, but a scan. So it should be to scale. But I pinned...
Guest - Katrin
Sprang Discussion
15 September 2026
I was not referring to Rachel's reconstruction (is the reconstruction you refer to the one photograp...
Guest - Beatrix
Sprang Discussion
14 September 2026
There is something Rachel did not mention. She told me: "Well, I worked with the measurements we too...
Guest - Katrin
Sprang Discussion
14 September 2026
Well, this is certainly developing into an interesting discussion.
Firstly, going from that lovely l...
They have been found!
To my unending delight, I've received a message yesterday evening... the travelling merchants have been found!
A friend hunted them down for me, with help of the search engine "ecosia": she found an image in the same style, searched for the name connected with it (Girart de Roussillon), landed on pinterest and found the image with a link to the manuscript there. Thank you so much!
It's Codex 2549 in the Austrian National Library, and it's available as a digital image. See it in all its glory here. According to the explanation, it shows Girart, his wife, and two companions, together with two pack animals. Seems it's not a merchant after all, that guy - he was a count, instead. The original person lived in the 9th century, but became star of a chanson de geste later in the Middle Ages - the Roman de Girart de Roussillon.
So... what do we learn from this?
A: Search engines are not all alike, nor are the methods of the people using them.
B: It never hurts to ask for help. I should do more of that.
C: Illuminations stand in context with the text, and it's really a smart idea to check that context. It does make a difference whether it's a travelling count or whether it's merchants... so I'd like to find out more about that. (Which means deciphering the text on the page, and deciphering the Old French, so probably nothing that will be done just now. But hooray, now I can!)
A friend hunted them down for me, with help of the search engine "ecosia": she found an image in the same style, searched for the name connected with it (Girart de Roussillon), landed on pinterest and found the image with a link to the manuscript there. Thank you so much!
It's Codex 2549 in the Austrian National Library, and it's available as a digital image. See it in all its glory here. According to the explanation, it shows Girart, his wife, and two companions, together with two pack animals. Seems it's not a merchant after all, that guy - he was a count, instead. The original person lived in the 9th century, but became star of a chanson de geste later in the Middle Ages - the Roman de Girart de Roussillon.
So... what do we learn from this?
A: Search engines are not all alike, nor are the methods of the people using them.
B: It never hurts to ask for help. I should do more of that.
C: Illuminations stand in context with the text, and it's really a smart idea to check that context. It does make a difference whether it's a travelling count or whether it's merchants... so I'd like to find out more about that. (Which means deciphering the text on the page, and deciphering the Old French, so probably nothing that will be done just now. But hooray, now I can!)
By accepting you will be accessing a service provided by a third-party external to https://pallia.net/