erikkwakkel:Medieval glasses (1): Dropped in the toiletOver time, and as early as the Middle Ages, r
erikkwakkel:Medieval glasses (1): Dropped in the toiletOver time, and as early as the Middle Ages, readers had an increasing number of tools at their disposal to make the actual act of reading easier. As letter types decreased in size, glasses came into use, likely in the 13th century. These were usually clip-on models without support behind the ears, as shown on the lower image.The upper image shows a pair of 14th-century glasses. This pair is unusual. Not just because they survive (very few do), but how they did. These glasses were excavated from a medieval toilet in the Augustinian monastic house in Freiburg, Germany. Correct, this instrument of precision, this novelty of technology, lay dormant for centuries in the monastery’s darkest hole.It is possible the glasses were dumped because the frame was broken, but I like to believe they slipped off the reader’s nose while he was reading on the toilet. That this case is, as it were, the medieval equivalent of our modern smartphone toilet-drop, prompting a familiar question: to retrieve or to cut one’s losses? Our reader opted, wisely and fortunately for us, for the latter.Pics: London, British Library, Yates Thompson MS 5, c. 1500 (more here the toilet glasses are discussed in Kay Peter Jankrift, Medizin im Mittelalter, Chapter “Augenleiden”. -- source link
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