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Scene of the burning of the martyr Eustace and his family in the belly of a brazen bull at the will of the Emperor Hadrian, from a thirteenth-century French manuscript of legends of the saints
Science · Mores
Execution in the brazen bull from Phalaris of Sicily to Rus in the early modern era
Execution by roasting alive inside a brazen bull has been known since the 6th century BC. It was first introduced under the Sicilian dictator Phalaris. The dreadful irony is that the coppersmith Perilaus, who by tradition built the first brazen bull for executions, ended his own life in it. As,
Faith · Art · People
Saint Eustace, formerly the Roman soldier Placidus, and his martyrdom with his family
In the frescoes of Catholic cathedrals one can see a man in armour bearing a banner with a stag's head and a crucifix; often the same knight's coat of arms shows a brazen bull, and sometimes he has no heraldic devices at all but carries two
NB! · Archive · Books · London · Mores · Humour
The School of Venus: a sex manual for women of the seventeenth century, London, 1680
The School of Venus: a sex manual for women of the seventeenth century, London, 1680. The words in this text still strike one as bawdy vocabulary today, though the comparison with cows' teats is simply odd
NB! · Architecture · Paris
One of the Loveliest Pavilions Stands in the Very Heart of Paris
One of the loveliest pavilions stands in the very heart of Paris. The avenue of Nicholas II was renamed Alexander III, and in 1966 Winston Churchill
NB! · Archive · Architecture · Monarchies · Paris
The Russian Pavilion at the 1900 Paris World's Fair stood on the Avenue Nicolas II, which ran from the bridge of Alexander III, whose foundation stone the Emperor had laid, to the Champs-Élysées
NB! · Faith · Cinema · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour
That Goblet of Fire from Harry Potter looks remarkably like the reliquary of Cosmas and Damian
NB! · Faith · Observations · Heritage
Reliquary with the bones of the holy unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian
A reliquary with the bones of the holy Unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian, venerated in both the Catholic and the Orthodox traditions. I do not know to which of the three pairs of saints bearing these names the relics belong
NB! · Faith · Art · Books · Monarchies · Mores
A touching detail from a fifteenth-century Utrecht Bible: beside the sickbed of an ailing queen hangs a tiny portrait of the king
NB! · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Observations
The portrait of Marie-Antoinette with her children was commissioned in 1785 from the fashionable portraitist Vigée Le Brun for 18,000 livres, a sum equivalent to more than 6 kg of 917-fineness gold, if I have not erred in my calculations
NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Rome
French passport of 1830 issued to a Corsican student travelling to Rome
Authentic passport of a Corsican student in Rome, 1830. As is only proper, the king is mentioned in every document