Rivalry in sports is not just something of our time. Nor is baseball. Both date back to at least the fourteenth century, when this image was made. What is less likely encountered in a baseball game today are the teams: monks vs nuns. The scene is from the margin of a medieval page, the location used to make fun of people. The manuscript contains a romance, popular among the medieval nobility. Somewhere, someone in a castle had a good laugh about these religious men and women playing ball.
Pic: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264 (14th c). Browse the entire manuscript here. More enjoyable marginal drawings like this are found in this Tumblr post.
