This past month, on the eve of the June 22nd feast of St Alban, the library of Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin announced that it had dig­i­tized the “13th cen­tu­ry mas­ter­piece” the Book of St Alban, a rich­ly illus­trat­ed man­u­script that “fea­tures 54 indi­vid­ual works of medieval art and has fas­ci­nat­ed read­ers across the cen­turies, from roy­al­ty to renais­sance schol­ars.”

Cre­at­ed by the Bene­dic­tine monk Matthew Paris, the man­u­script “chron­i­cles the life of St Alban,” notes The Irish Times, “and also out­lines the con­struc­tion of St Alban’s Cathe­dral in Hert­ford­shire.” The text and illus­tra­tions explain the ori­gins of a cult of St. Alban, the first Eng­lish mar­tyr, that began to spring up after his 4th cen­tu­ry death.

Accord­ing to the Ven­er­a­ble Bede, the Eng­lish monk who wrote the Eccle­si­as­ti­cal His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Peo­ple, the mar­tyr­dom of Alban involved a few mirac­u­lous events. Sen­tenced to die for his refusal to renounce Chris­tian­i­ty, Alban sup­pos­ed­ly peti­tioned God to dry up the Riv­er Ver so he could more quick­ly reach the place of his exe­cu­tion.

This mir­a­cle caused Alban’s Roman exe­cu­tion­er to fall to his feet, spon­ta­neous­ly con­vert, and refuse to kill the saint. A sec­ond exe­cu­tion­er stepped in to behead them both, where­upon this man’s eyes popped out of his head. “He who gave the wicked stroke,” writes Bede, “was not per­mit­ted to rejoice over the deceased; for his eyes dropped upon the ground togeth­er with the blessed mar­tyr’s head.”

In the illus­tra­tion of this gris­ly sto­ry (top) from the man­u­script, we see the exe­cu­tion­er hold­ing his eyes in his hand, and Alban’s head appears to have been caught by the hair on a tree branch above. Anoth­er illus­tra­tion, fur­ther up, shows a char­ac­ter named Her­a­clius mak­ing off with Alban’s head.

In a lat­er leg­end, Alban’s head rolled to the bot­tom of Holy­well Hill, and a well sprang from where it came to rest. On the sup­posed site of Alban’s exe­cu­tion now stands St Albans Cathe­dral, once St Albans Abbey, where the Book of St Albans remained for 300 years until Hen­ry VIII dis­solved Britain’s monas­ter­ies in 1539.

The book is writ­ten in both Latin and Anglo-Nor­man French, “which made it acces­si­ble to a wider sec­u­lar audi­ence includ­ing edu­cat­ed noble women,” Trin­i­ty Col­lege’s Caoimhe Ni Lochlainn writes. “It was bor­rowed by noble ladies of the peri­od, includ­ing the King’s sis­ter-in-law Count­ess of Corn­wall, Sanchia of Provence, and oth­ers.”

The man­u­script even­tu­al­ly made its way to Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin in 1661, where it has remained ever since, and where its “most­ly framed nar­ra­tive scenes” have been admired by a select few. Now every­one can access the book and its illus­tra­tions, made with a “tint­ed draw­ing tech­nique,” Lochlainn notes, “where out­lined draw­ings are high­light­ed with col­ored wash­es from a lim­it­ed palette. This tech­nique was dis­tinct­ly Eng­lish, dat­ing back to the Anglo Sax­on art of the 10th cen­tu­ry.”

See all the gris­ly details of this fas­ci­nat­ing arti­fact at Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions, and learn more about the man­u­script in the video just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Has Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

The Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts of Medieval Europe: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“The Voyn­ich man­u­script is a real medieval book, and has been car­bon-dat­ed to the ear­ly 1400s.” No mod­ern hoax, this noto­ri­ous­ly bizarre text has in fact “passed through the hands of many over the years,” includ­ing “sci­en­tists, emper­ors, and col­lec­tors.” Though “we still don’t know who actu­al­ly wrote it, the illus­tra­tions hint at the book’s orig­i­nal pur­pose,” hav­ing “much in com­mon with medieval herbals, astrol­o­gy guides, and bathing man­u­als.” Hence the like­li­hood of the Voyn­ich man­u­script being “some sort of med­ical text­book, although a very strange one by any mea­sure. Then there’s the writ­ing.”

This sum­ma­ry of the known his­to­ry and nature of the most mys­te­ri­ous man­u­script in exis­tence comes from the Youtube video above, “Secrets of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script.” Its chan­nel Hochela­ga has pre­vi­ous­ly been fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for episodes on medieval mon­sters, a guide to super­nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na from renais­sance Ger­many, Hoku­sai’s ghost art, and the Bib­li­cal apoc­a­lypse.

In short, the Voyn­ich man­u­script could hard­ly find a more accom­mo­dat­ing wheel­house. And as in Hochela­ga’s oth­er videos, the sub­ject is approached not with total creduli­ty, but rather a clear and straight­for­ward dis­cus­sion of why gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of enthu­si­asts have kept try­ing to fig­ure it out.

No aspect of the Voyn­ich man­u­script fas­ci­nates as much as its hav­ing been “writ­ten in a mys­tery lan­guage with a unique alpha­bet and gram­mat­i­cal rules.” It could be an exist­ing lan­guage ren­dered in code; it could be one cre­at­ed entire­ly and only for this book. Though attempts are made with some fre­quen­cy, “no one has been able to defin­i­tive­ly solve the Voyn­ich man­u­scrip­t’s lan­guage.” It could, of course, be that “we’ve fall­en for one big medieval prank,” but the video’s cre­ator does­n’t buy that expla­na­tion. Even in its incom­pre­hen­si­bil­i­ty, the text appears to pos­sess great com­plex­i­ty. If it were to be decod­ed, “would the mag­ic and mys­tery dis­ap­pear? Or would we uncov­er a whole new set of ques­tions and embark on anoth­er jour­ney entire­ly?”

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to “the World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book,” the 15th-Cen­tu­ry Voyn­ich Man­u­script

The Mys­te­ri­ous Voyn­ich Man­u­script Gets Dig­i­tized: Explore the 15th-Cen­tu­ry Text That Lin­guists & Code-Break­ers Can’t Under­stand

The Voyn­ich Man­u­script: A New Doc­u­men­tary Takes a Deep Dive Into the Mys­ter­ies of the Bizarre Man­u­script

Has the Voyn­ich Man­u­script Final­ly Been Decod­ed?: Researchers Claim That the Mys­te­ri­ous Text Was Writ­ten in Pho­net­ic Old Turk­ish

The Writ­ing Sys­tem of the Cryp­tic Voyn­ich Man­u­script Explained: British Researcher May Have Final­ly Cracked the Code

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence May Have Cracked the Code of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script: Has Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy Final­ly Solved a Medieval Mys­tery?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Though not a long book, The Art of War is nev­er­the­less an intim­i­dat­ing one. Com­posed in the Chi­na of the fifth cen­tu­ry BC, it comes down to us as per­haps the defin­i­tive analy­sis of mil­i­tary strat­e­gy, applic­a­ble equal­ly to East, West, antiq­ui­ty, and moder­ni­ty alike. Hence the minor but still-pro­duc­tive indus­try that puts forth adap­ta­tions, exten­sions, and rein­ter­pre­ta­tions of The Art of War for non-mil­i­tary set­tings, trans­pos­ing its lessons into law, busi­ness, sports, and oth­er realms besides. But if you want a han­dle on what its author, the gen­er­al and strate­gist Sun Tzu, actu­al­ly wrote, watch the illus­trat­ed video above.

A pro­duc­tion of Youtube chan­nel Eudai­mo­nia, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for a sim­i­lar­ly ani­mat­ed exe­ge­sis of Machi­avel­li’s The Prince, it runs more than two and a half hours in full. Far though it exceeds the length of the aver­age explain­er video, it does reflect the ten­den­cy of Sun Tzu’s suc­cinct obser­va­tions to expand, when seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered, into much wider and more com­plex dis­cus­sions. To each of the orig­i­nal tex­t’s chap­ters the Eudai­mo­nia video devotes a ten-to-fif­teen-minute sec­tion, con­vey­ing not just the con­tent of its lessons but also their rel­e­vance to the his­to­ry of human con­flict in the rough­ly two and a half mil­len­nia since they were writ­ten.

In chap­ter two, on wag­ing war, Sun Tzu writes that “in order to kill the ene­my, our men must be roused to anger.” It was in this spir­it that, dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, the Unit­ed King­dom’s Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion launched a media “anger cam­paign” meant to “increase resolve against the Ger­mans, as until then, the British had lit­tle sense of real hos­til­i­ty towards the aver­age Ger­man.” In the chap­ter on weak­ness­es and strengths, Sun Tzu rec­om­mends “the divine art of sub­tle­ty and secre­cy” as a means of becom­ing invis­i­ble and inaudi­ble to the ene­my — much as Julius Cae­sar did in the Gal­lic Wars, when he sent scout­ing ships “paint­ed in Venet­ian blue, which was a sim­i­lar col­or to that of the sea.”

Oth­er exam­ples come from diverse chap­ters of his­to­ry. These include the Amer­i­can Civ­il War, Gand­hi’s nego­ti­a­tion of Indi­an inde­pen­dence, the Napoleon­ic Wars, the British defeat in Zul­u­land, Joan of Arc’s siege of Orléans, the revolt against the Turk­ish led by T. E. Lawrence (bet­ter known as Lawrence of Ara­bia), and even Steve Jobs’ turn­around of a near­ly bank­rupt Apple. Most of us will nev­er find our­selves in sit­u­a­tions of quite these stakes. But giv­en that none of us can entire­ly avoid deal­ing with con­flict, we’d could do worse than to keep the guid­ance of Sun Tzu on our side.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Machiavelli’s The Prince Explained in an Illus­trat­ed Film

10 Rea­sons Why Hannibal’s Mil­i­tary Genius Still Cap­tures Our Imag­i­na­tion Today

What Ancient Chi­nese Phi­los­o­phy Can Teach Us About Liv­ing the Good Life Today: Lessons from Harvard’s Pop­u­lar Pro­fes­sor, Michael Puett

Hear an Ancient Chi­nese His­to­ri­an Describe The Roman Empire (and Oth­er Voic­es of the Past)

How Many U.S. Marines Could Bring Down the Roman Empire?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

As every­one knows, Japan con­ced­ed defeat in the Sec­ond World War on August 15, 1945. But as many also know, cer­tain indi­vid­ual Japan­ese sol­diers refused to sur­ren­der, each con­tin­u­ing to fight the war for decades in his own way. The most famous was Lieu­tenant Ono­da Hiroo, who hid out in the Philip­pines mount­ing guer­ril­la attacks — at first with a few fel­low sol­diers, and final­ly alone — until 1974. Ono­da became a celebri­ty upon retun­ing to his home­land, and his admir­ers weren’t only Japan­ese. In Tokyo to direct an opera in 1997, Wern­er Her­zog request­ed an intro­duc­tion to one man only: the sol­dier who’d fought the war for 30 years.

Now Ono­da has become the sub­ject of one of Her­zog’s lat­est projects: not a film, but a nov­el called The Twi­light World. In his native Ger­man (brought into Eng­lish by trans­la­tor-crit­ic Michael Hof­mann), Her­zog has writ­ten of not just his own meet­ing with Ono­da but nar­rat­ed Onoda’s own long expe­ri­ence in the Philip­pines.

“Onoda’s war is of no mean­ing for the cos­mos, for his­to­ry, for the course of the war,” goes one pas­sage quot­ed by A. O. Scott in The Atlantic. “Onoda’s war is formed from the union of an imag­i­nary noth­ing and a dream, but Onoda’s war, sired by noth­ing, is nev­er­the­less over­whelm­ing, an event extort­ed from eter­ni­ty.”

One thinks of the pro­tag­o­nists of Her­zog’s films, both imag­ined and real: the steamship-drag­ging rub­ber baron Bri­an Sweeney Fitzger­ald, the downed Navy pilot Dieter Den­gler, the delud­ed con­quis­ta­dor Lope de Aguirre, the ill-fat­ed wildlife activist Tim­o­thy Tread­well. In Onoda’s case as well, Scott writes, “Her­zog declines to treat him as a joke. He is clear­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by the absur­di­ty of this hero’s sit­u­a­tion, and also deter­mined to defend the dig­ni­ty of a man who had no choice but to per­se­vere in an impos­si­ble mis­sion.” Any­one famil­iar with Her­zog’s career, full of har­row­ing encoun­ters and unpre­dictable turns but clear­ly oper­at­ing by an iron log­ic all its own, can imag­ine why he saw in Ono­da a kin­dred spir­it.

Eight years after his death at the age of 91, Ono­da remains a fig­ure of gen­er­al fas­ci­na­tion, the sub­ject of his­to­ry videos viewed by mil­lions as well as last year’s Ono­da: 10,000 Nights of the Jun­gle, a fea­ture by French direc­tor Arthur Harari. Of course,  “the guy who stays in the field long after the war is over is, to mod­ern eyes, a com­i­cal, cau­tion­ary fig­ure, an avatar of patri­o­tism car­ried to ridicu­lous extremes,” writes Scott. “We rarely pause to look for motives oth­er than blind obe­di­ence, or to imag­ine what those years of phan­tom com­bat in the wilder­ness must have felt like.” Per­haps we twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry West­ern­ers sim­ply lack the imag­i­na­tive pow­er nec­es­sary to do so — all of us, that, is except Wern­er Her­zog. You can pre-order his nov­el, The Twi­light World, now. It hits the shelves next week, on June 14th.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing and Life Advice

Wern­er Her­zog Tells a Book Club Why The Pere­grine Is One of His Favorite Books, a 20th-Cen­tu­ry Mas­ter­piece

Wern­er Her­zog Dis­cov­ers the Ecsta­sy of Skate­board­ing: “That’s Kind of My Peo­ple”

The Dream Dri­ven Film­mak­ing of Wern­er Her­zog: Watch the Video Essay, “The Inner Chron­i­cle of What We Are: Under­stand­ing Wern­er Her­zog”

Time Trav­el Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remark­ably High-Qual­i­ty 1940s Video

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.