All my life I've wanted a pet evangelist.
No, not really. Silly me. What I meant was, ever since I saw it, I fell in love. Saw what, you ask? Well, I can't show you for copyright reasons, but it's the best lion-headed evangelist you'll ever meet.
All right, it's this:
Hereford Cathedral Library MS O.1.viii, fol 46. This image (c) the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral. Unauthorized copying of the copy I made will result in a thrashing.
Look at that grin! He's the most naughty little lion-headed saint! You couldn't possibly resist it. Ever since I saw it in Carol Strickland's Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art, I knew it had to be mine--but it has to be in color.
Some years ago, my friend Brooke and I were at Cambridge, and she was touring one of their libraries and came across a ninth-century Irish Jesus. Immediately she shouted, "That's my next tattoo!" to which the curator responded, "No-one's ever said that before." But she got it, and it's damned awesome, and I want a medieval manuscript illumination tattoo as well.
So I find now that Hereford Cathedral is online, and they do let you have prints. But I can't quite bring myself to find if they're going to let me have this--and certainly not for a tattoo, of all things.
However, if you out there in Blogospheria can find a way, you will be rewarded handsomely. Possibly with a handsome cab.
