Happenstance? Or happens all the time….?

Is there such a thing as coincidence? Happenstance? Fluke? Call it what you will, sometimes things happen that make us wonder. For instance, how often are you reading a word or phrase at the same time that someone on TV uses it? Well, if you’re buried in books as often as I am, then it’s bound to occur from time to time. The laws of average and so on.

This morning something occurred that certainly gave me cause to wonder. I got out of bed determined to abandon my present research to change an aspect of the opening chapter of my never-ending wip. Never-ending because research keeps turning up new information that makes actual completion seem ever-more-distant. The chapter is set in the Franciscan Abbey of the Minoresses of St. Clare without Aldgate, north of the Tower of London. For the change I had in mind I needed to know exactly what a nun at the abbey would wear. So I set to work and soon amassed quite a lot of information which I stored away in yet another docx file. 😵

Well, with the Minoresses and their clothing duly attended to, I returned to my usual research, which yesterday had entailed several concentrated hours writing about Froissart reading his book Mélidor to the court of the Count of Foix. Authors reading their own work to a noble audience was very much the thing in the 14^th century.

So what has this to do with coincidence, do I hear you ask? Well I selected a book from the shelf….and promptly managed to drop it. The page at which it fell open bore an illustration of St. Clare of Assisi reading to the Poor Clares. There she is, on a balcony, with the sisters at their meal below. How is that for a coincidence? Not only does the illustration include someone reading to an audience, but both reader and audience are Poor Clares!

It took me aback, so please do not shrug your shoulders, stifle a yawn and mutter that it’s nothing and happens all the time. Nor do I want to hear that I must have seen the book and its illustration before and it was in my subconscious. Very deeply hidden, is all I can say because the book was one of the many “to be reads” I’ve amassed. And what are the chances of it falling open at the very illustration that encapsulates both subjects that had absorbed me for the past twenty-four hours?

For more informaton see here, here and here. The latter is also available at this Murrey & Blue blog.