Old Tom Parr

In Westminster Abbey, there lies the body of Old Tom Parr in an incredible place of honor resting in the hall of nobles and princes. Of these he was none; he was an oddity. He lived to be 152 years old.

That is right this old man told you to shut your mouth.

Born: 1483
Died: November 1635

No one is really sure how old he really was at his death but he prescribes 
"keep your head cool by temperance and your feet warm by exercise. Rise early, go soon to bed, and if you want to grow fat [prosperous] keep your eyes open and your mouth shut."1

1.Westminster Abbey: Thomas Parr 

; http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/thomas-parr

2. Darwin Country: Parr, Thomas (1483-1635) 'Old Parr'; http://www.darwincountry.org/explore/001716.html

Thomas Chatterton: Poet and a Fraud

I may be inconsistent in posting but you can be sure that I will post on Saturdays, just to let you guys know.
I am like half asleep now but let's do a post! (talking partly to myself and partly to you)

Unusual Death: Thomas Chatterton

Thomas Chatterton was a poet whose gifts are largely unnoticed, he would sit and write and read all day when a child. He was a child of the eighteenth century and also was a fraud.

A representation of his death by Henry Wallis.

Poetry gives poets the opportunity to paint the world in their own image, though Tom chose to write in the guise of another.  He said that the were by Thomas Rowley who was a fifteenth century poet and monk. Yet even though he was proclaimed a fraud, the brilliancy of his poetry is unanimous. A modernized snippet from exclassics.com of a poem of his:

"[Look in his gloomed face, his sprightly there scan;How woe-be-gone, how withered, forewarned, dead!Haste to the church graves, accursed man!Haste to the coffin, the only bedroom bed.Cale, as the clay which will grow on thy head,Is Charity and Love among high elves;Knights and Barons live for pleasure and themselves.]"

You must notice how beautiful flowing his poetry is, but when you read it closely you can see a little of the depression he suffered. He had stopped eating, depression had overcome him. When he was offered food, he said he was not hungry, in truth he had not eaten in three days.  He returned to his attic where he had once written marvelous poems, now he was poor in money and in happiness. He carried with him a bottle...of arsenic. He drank it then tore his literary remains. He was only seventeen.



Yet you might not know that he is a Romantic poetry icon, a poem by John Keats was dedicated to him, and he is the subject of novels.


Sources:

1911 Encyclopedia Britannia: Thomas Chatterton: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Chatterton,_Thomas

Special Collection Department: Forging a Collection: Thomas Chatterton and the Rowley Forgeries: http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/forgery/rowley.htm

Quotable: Two from Early Centuries Men.

It's the obscure quotes that I have been looking for but it will give you the quote fix that everybody needs once in awhile--- actually to tide you completely over I will give you two. Um....yeah, Let's get into it.

• Quote by Bernard of Chartres 

"We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giant,

so that we can see more then they, and things

at a greater distance, not by virtue of any

sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical

distinction, but because we are carried

and raised up by their great size. "

A very popular and inspiring quote by a philosopher, and a man of the first century at that! I hope not all of his work is just about giants and dwarfs, not that anything is bad about that, it would be a little weird (sorry short people! I'm short so I know how it is).

Saint Augustine and apparently his dog.

•  Quote by St. Augustine

"I loved not yet, yet I loved to love....I sought what I might love, loving to love. "  

 Oh Google and it's weird spacing.
Today we wouldn't expect saints to talk especially about love. Christian saints are supposed to be virtuous not indulge in or talk about sins, like this quote suggests; it might suggest the sin lust. And St. Augustine was a church father, yet he was plagued by Christian 'sins'.
I should try looking up about Augustine if I have the time to. A man who makes confessions should be very interesting.

Please check out The Confessions of St. Augustine!
It has all the juicy gossip you can get from a first century saint....plus it's a classic. Click the link on the picture.








Sources:
The Yale Book of Quotations, edited by Fred R. Shapiro with a foreword by Joseph Epstein.

Religious Paintings of the 13th century

Jesus has the body of a man and the head
of a boy.

Random Fun Fact
In the the bridge between the ancient times and middle ages, it seems 13th century artists didn't really care about how church altar paintings maybe interpreted but only if the viewers got the message of what was happening inside of it. This resulted in some awkward paintings.








When I'm really tired and don't feel like writing a post, I hope to write a quick post like this one of a random fun fact about a specific painting or other things.