M for ‘Manus’ (‘Hand’)
A Series of Blogposts
Our blog on Manuscript Studies, begun in 2015, reports and illustrates a variety of manuscripts, fragments, and documents, sometimes with seals included. In keeping with our interests in manuscript and other evidence, some posts consider printed materials, including early printed evidence.
Some posts include Booklets downloadable in PDF format. The Booklets are set in our copyright font Bembino (available for FREE) and laid out according to the principles of our Style Manifesto.
The materials belong to different owners, who allow us to study these materials long-term and report the research results, with photographs reproduced by permission.
With guest bloggers as they can join us, our Director Mildred Budny produces many of the blogposts. You could learn more about her work, activities, and interests, and view her Curriculum Vitae on Mildred Budny: Her Page.
Some Posts report discoveries relating to Items in Mildred Budny’s Illustrated Handlist of Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts, Documents, and Printed Materials. They are indicated here by Handlist Numbers in red.
Do you have a blogpost to contribute? Do you have suggestions for subjects? We welcome your imput.
*****
With thanks to Susan L’Engle for including it in the newsletter Manuscripts on My Mind: News from the Vatican Film Library, a first list of the posts was reported in Number 16 (page 15). This discourse gave inspiration for preparing a list of the posts as they appear. You are Here.
*****
Here we provide a Contents List for these Reports, grouped mostly by subjects.
I. Setting the Stage
‘Show & Tell’ Seminar on Manuscripts & Their Photographs
Reflections on the photography of manuscripts and written materials
made under a variety of conditions, revealing aspects that a single image could not
Photography © Mildred Budny
The ‘Foundling Hospital’ for Manuscript Fragments
The Case of One of My Favorite Manuscripts, Ripped Up, Alas, by the Center That Made It
© British Library Board, Royal MS 1 E.VI, folio 43r. Reproduced by permission
Lost and Foundlings
The Sellers’ Tells, Sadly, with a Preview of Examples by Otto F. Ege
Photography © Mildred Budny
Manuscript Groupies
A Light-Hearted View of Group Portraits, when it comes to Manuscripts and Their Best Sides, Photo Ops Included
Photography © Mildred Budny
Center-Fold
Another Light-Hearted View, Celebrating a Volunteer CopyCat Editor
Photography © Mildred Budny
[Update: By popular request, Miss Mistie now has her very own Fan Club. See Mistie’s Fan Page, with more pictures and anecdotes.]
A reflection upon processes over time of examining Anglo-Saxon and related manuscripts, with a focus upon a layered, monumental manuscript whose study notably prepared the way for the approaches of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence.
Julia Smith introduces The Royal Bible of Saint Augustine’s Abbey Canterbury in her Plenary Lecture in December 2018.
II. Documents in Question
Curiouser and Curiouser
A Most Strange Seal on a Paper Document of A.D. 1345, Old Style, from Grenoble
Scrap of Information
A Puzzling Fragment from a French Charter with the Date, Maybe Accurate, of 1538
Full Court Preston
A Pair of 13th-Century Documents, Missing Their Seals, from Preston, Near Ipswich, in Suffolk
(Competition with Book Prizes Included)
Notarial Roll of 1305 from Cesena
A complete documentary scroll from Emelia-Romagna in North-East Italy,
with Notarial Sign and Signature
Lillian Vail Dymond
A guest blogpost by Linde M. Brocato considers the case, such as by adoption, of the several names which official documents might adopt at various times when referring to a single individual, particularly for an individual whose history passes through various times and places with different forms of record.
Fit to Be Tied
A single-sheet document of Cardinal–Bishop Bérengar de Frédul concerning a dispute at Calahorra, bearing the date 13 July 1320, and carrying a red cord tie.
Say Cheese
An Undated Single-sheet Document in French, written by a single hand probably during the 1530s (presumably in the very region), records a survey of rents for plots of land from the region of Brie in France
Latin Document of 1437 on Vellum from Barcelona
A single-sheet document records one or more transactions concerning the sale of property from one “transporter of animals” to another (curritorem animalium)
Notarial Signature Version 1
III. Isolated Manuscript Fragments
The Mass of Saint Gregory, Illustrated
A Leaf from a Prayerbook with a Late 15th-Century Illustration, probably made in France or the Netherlands, of the visionary Mass performed by Gregory the Great. To him appears the figure of Christ surrounded by Most of the Instruments and Agents of His Passion, upon a brilliant blue background.
Leaf from a Tiny Book of Hours
A Leaf from the Hours of the Virgin in an Unknown 15th-century Book of Hours
A Leaf from the Office of the Dead
Part of the Office of the Dead from a 15th-century Book of Hours made in Flanders (perhaps at Bruges or Antwerp) circa 1470;
with a Personal Reflection on the Subject, occasioned by the death of Jennifer O’Reilly (1943–2016)
Part-Leaf from a Large-Format Lectionary
Parts of I Maccabees 10 and Homily 38 on the Gospels by Gregory the Great
from a large-format Latin lectionary, probably made in Italy, perhaps Northern Italy, circa 1175
reduced to the lower part of the leaf, for reuse as a wrapper or binder for unknown materials
Three Leaves from a Latin Religious Pocket Handbook
3 Non-Continuous Leaves from a 14th-Century Handbook
of Texts for Religious & Liturgical Practice
including parts of Psalm 77 (78 ) and
Eadmer’s Tractatus de Conceptione Beatae Mariae
Written in the Stars
A pair of continuous leaves from the end of a Roman Breviary,
with lections from Patristic sermons
by Leo the Great, Gregory the Great, and Augustine of Hippo
about the Visit of the 3 Magi to the Christ Child and the rôle of the Star(s),
in a denial of the powers of astrology
Spoonful of Sugar
A bifolium from a Latin treatise on medical substances from an unknown center,
reused as the cover for a thick book bound with wooden boards and
subsequently retrieved, with the loss of most of its contextual context,
perhaps recoverable in part with wider awareness of this solitary survival
It’s a Wrap
A decorated and annotated leaf from a large-format copy of the Novels of Justinian’s Code, made almost certainly at Bologna (or Padua) circa 1260–1280, found reuse as a wrapper, pasted and folded, with added tie, for other stuff.
A Reused Part-Leaf from Bede’s Homilies on the Gospels
A vellum part-leaf from a 14th-century large-format Latin copy of Bede’s Gospel Homilies (and perhaps other texts) in double columns,
perhaps made in France, found reuse as part of a cover apparently for a modern land ledger (now lost) and then retrieval as a scrap on its own for sale from France.
A Leaf from Gregory’s Dialogues Reused to Bind Euthymius
A leaf from the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great (Book III.7), copied probably in Germany circa 1175, and reused as the cover for the binding of a copy (now lost) of Euthymius Zigabenus’s Commentary on the Psalms
Handlist 3, Verso
Another Witness to the Cistercian Statutes of 1257
A Part-Leaf, now on its own, carries parts of the Chapter De Conversis (“On the Lay Brothers”)
from Distinctio (“Section”) XIV (out of XV in total)
in the Codification of 1257 of Statutes for the Cistercian Order
A 12th-Century Fragment of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo
A fragmentary vellum leaf from chapters close to the end of Anselm’s theological–philosophical masterwork “Why God Became a Man” has surfaced in France, removed from its former use as the cover or wrapper, with flap closure, for some now-lost materials, presumably a book or notebook on paper. This fragment joins the select corpus of early manuscript witnesses to the text.
Verso of the Leaf and Interior of the Binding, Detail: Lower Right-Hand Corner, with the Mitered Flap Unfolded.
Vellum Bifolium from Augustine’s ‘Homilies on John’
A newly acquired fragment of a vellum bifolium, recovered from its intermediary state as a cover for some other textual material apparently at Büdingen, in Hesse, Germany, comes from a 12th-century large-format copy in double columns of the Sermons on the Gospels of John by Augustine of Hippo.
Sanskrit and Prakrit Manuscripts
We showcase a selection of fragments from palm-leaf and paper manuscripts in a single private collection.
The Penitent King David from a Book of Hours
A detached leaf, framed behind glass, with a frontispiece illustration of King David, with discarded crown and lyre, for the opening of Psalm 4 or 37 (38) in the Vulgate Latin version.
J. S. Wagner Collection. Detached Manuscript Leaf.
A Leaf from Prime in a Large-Format Latin Breviary
A detached leaf bearing the modern number “4” on its recto presents parts of the service for the Hour of Prime in a former manuscript, with script and decoration indicating an origin probably in Spain in the 16th or 17th century
J. S. Wagner Collection. Leaf “4” Recto, detail. The opening of Psalm 117 (118) in the Vulgate Version, with a framed initial C for ‘Confitimini’.
IV. Dispersed Manuscript Fragments Reassembled, at Least Virtually
A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 41’
Part of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great (Book III.12–14) from a 15th-Century Manuscript Plundered in Belgium in World War I
More Discoveries for ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 41’
Leaf 41, plus mat and label, in the Family Album of Otto Ege’s Portfolio of ‘Fifty Original Leaves’. Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Photograph by Mildred Budny.
A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 61’
Part of Ezekiel 10–11 from a 32-Line Vulgate Pocket Bible from France
More Discoveries for ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 61’
Opening Lines of the Book of Zachariah. Courtesy of Flora Lamson Hewlett Library, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA. Reproduced by permission.
A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 8’
Latin Processional for Palm Sunday for Singing Nuns: A Detached Leaf from ‘The Wilton Processional’
A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’
Part of the Interpretation of Hebrew Names (Alcath – Ananias)
from a 50-line Vulgate Lectern Bible with Splendid Decoration and Illustration, as Once Was
More Discoveries for ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’
The deposit of the Ege Family Collection in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library brings to light more remnants from the large-format Lectern Bible
“A Long Shot”. New Acquisitions Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in November 2016: View of Some Parts of “Otto Ege Manuscript 14”. Photography by Mildred Budny.
More Leaves from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 51’
Detached Leaves from Ege’s Erfurt Manuscript of 1365 CE of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics in Latin Translation on Paper 
More Leaves from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 51’
The deposit of the Ege Family Collection in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library brings to light more remnants from this composite manuscript, including the carcass of its Volume II.
Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Ege Manuscript 51, Volume II, Front Cover. Photograph by Mildred Budny.
New Testament Leaves in Old Armenian
A Pair of Leaves Identified, Described, Collated, and Set into the Context of its Manuscript
With a Downloadable Booklet (showcasing the Armenian font for the next version of our multilingual font Bembino)
A New Leaf Found at the University of Pennsylvania from the “Kurdian/Chicago New Testament Praxapostolos[?]in Old Armenian”
A New Leaf from “Otto Ege Manuscript 214”?
A detached leaf of text from a 22-Line Prayerbook in Dutch, perhaps from the Collection of Otto F. Ege
Private Collection. Leaf from a Dutch prayerbook, detail.
V. Manuscript Leaves or Bifolia
Reused as Covers for Later Materials and Still In Situ
A Part-Leaf from ‘The Life of Saint Blaise’
A fragmentary leaf from a Latin lectionary found its way forward as a reused limp vellum cover for an 18th-century paper notebook used as a register for receipts in French in the area of Plauzat in the Auvergne.
Cover-Up
A reused medieval bifolium with parts of Psalms 77 (78) and 87 (88), from a medium-format Latin Psalter made in the late 13th or early 14th century,
covers a 18th-century paper notebook of receipts in French relating to Dijon and its region
And Now Some Updates
While we continue to find more evidence that updates, upsets, revises, and refines the accumulating awareness, before we can write up all the discoveries, here is a Summary and Place-Holder.
More Updates for Some “Otto Ege Manuscripts”
VI. Manuscripts and Composite Manuscripts
A Composite Volume from Le Parc Abbey
Budny Handlist 15
“Albertus Magnus” (AKA Hugh Ripelin) Meets Peter the Venerable in a pair of partly decorated 15th-century Latin manuscripts from Le Parc Abbey in Belgium. Formerly separate, they were bound together in the 17th or 18th century at the abbey and sold along with many of its books in the 19th century.
An initial report appeared in a paper for one of our 2016 Conference Sessions, as reported in its Abstract: “Double Act: Manuscripts Combining Paper and Parchment”.
Opening between the Front Flyleaf, Verso, and Folio 1 recto, opening Part A (“Albertus Magnus”).
Folios 96v – 97r, closing Part A and opening Part B (Peter the Venerable).
*****
VII. Early Printed Materials
Watch this space.
Saint Andrew and His Book
*****
More to come . . .
*****
Initial M for “Manus” (“Hand”).
Do you have requests or suggestions for subjects for this blog?
Do you have materials — manuscripts, fragments, documents, seals, or archival, numismatic, epigraphical, and other specimens — to show?
Would you like to contribute? Please let us know.
We welcome suggestions and feedback. Contact Us and visit our Facebook Page.
*****
Wonderful to see how the research continues to reveal more and more discoveries.