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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

May I remind members of the fact that medieval reading desks have a slant of
at least 30 degrees and often more (look up any medieval picture of one).
The more people have to read from it, the steeper it is (as in choirs in
churches).  They are also smooth (so not carved on the surface to lay your
book on) and have a lip at the bottom, sometimes rather large ones (ca 5-8
cm) because the books used on them were large and heavy. That's why they had
desks in the first place; the books were too heavy  to hold in your hands
for a longer time. The moveable reading desks attached to large writing
desks or even to the large chairs used by scholars were even steeper and had
large lips too, because they were used very close up.

Writing desks have about the same slant, sometimes a little lower (ca 25
degrees) but often up to 45 degrees or more. They are never as low as the
Radegund 'desk'. This has a very practical reason: feather quils have to be
held quite horizontally to prevent ink from spilling from them. 

Besides that: footstools or -rests were often a bit sloping, as modern piano
or guitarists footrests. That the Radegund one is not damaged or doesn't
look worn is probably because it's a relic. And if she used it as a
fooststool in her capacity both as a queen or an abbess, don't forget that
medieval shoes are soft. They have thin leather soles and make no impression
on wood, except when you use a stool like that for a long long time.

I'm still not sure about the crosses on them, but could it be that the stool
was carved after she died and so made all the more symbolic? Or is that too
far fetched a notion?

Henk


In Peter Lasko's, The Kingdom of the Franks, pp. 74-75, he calls it "St 
Radegund's so-called reading desk" and judges it "almost certainly" a 
gift from the East, the imagery on the top showing distinctly eastern 
Christian features (Radegund is known to have written to the Byzantine 
Emperor Justin II, who on her request sent her a relic of the True Cross 
in a reliquary, which is also preserved in Poitiers).  The accompanying 
photographs show no lip at the bottom, but since the covers of missals 
-- precious ones, anyway -- would have had considerable surface texture, 
this could have interacted with the relief on the top of the "lectern" 
to stabilize the open text on it.   Had this object, whatever it 
actually is, been used as a footstool, one might expect more wear on the 
top surface.  In fact, had it been used much at all, one might have 
expected it to be in far worse shape than it appears to be in currently 
(surviving works made of wood from this early period are extremely 
rare).  Whatever its original function, it appears to have come quite 
early to have been regarded as a "secondary relic" of the saint who 
apparently owned it and thus carefully preserved, rather than regularly 
used.
Jim

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