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Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, MS W.782, folio 15r. Van Alphen Hours. Dutch Book of Hours made for a female patron in the mid 15th century. Opening page of the Hours of the Virgin: "Here du salste opdoen mine lippen". Image via Creative Commons. At the bottom of the bordered page, an elegantly dressed woman sits before a shiny bowl- or mirror-like object, in order, perhaps, to perform skrying or to lure a unicorn.
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Detail of illustration.
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Detail of recto of leaf from an Italian Giant Bible. Photography by Mildred Budny
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Another Visit to The Library Cafe
Leaf 41, Recto, Top Right, in the Family Album (Set Number 3) of Otto Ege's Portfolio of 'Fifty Original Leaves' (FOL). Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Photograph by Mildred Budny.
More Discoveries for ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 41’
Augustine Homilies Bifolium Folio IIr detail with title and initial for Sermon XCVI. Private Collection, reproduced by permission. Photograph by Mildred Budny.
Vellum Bifolium from Augustine’s “Homilies on John”
Gold stamp on blue cloth of the logo of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence. Detail from the front cover of Volume II of 'The Illustrated Catalogue'
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© The British Library Board. Harley MS 1023, folio 64 verso. End of Prologue to the Gospel of John and Part-Page Framed Illustration in Ink of the Eagle of Saint John the Evangelist.
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Libro de los juegos. Madrid, El Escorial, MS T.1.6, folio 17 verso, detail.
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Poster Announcing Bembino Version 1.5 (April 2018) with border for Web display
Bembino Version 1.5 (2018)
Lower Half of the Original Verso of a Single Leaf detached from a prayerbook in Dutch made circa 1530, owned and dismembered by Otto F. Ege, with the seller's description in pencil in the lower margin. Image reproduced by permission.
A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 214’?
© The British Library Board. Harley MS 628, folio 160 verso. the initial 'd' for 'Domini'.
2018 M-MLA Call for Papers
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Fountain of Books outside the Main Library of the Cincinnati Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.
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Leaf 41, Recto, Top Right, in the Family Album (Set Number 3) of Otto Ege's Portfolio of 'Fifty Original Leaves' (FOL). Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Photograph by Mildred Budny.
2017 M-MLA Panel
Poster for 'In a Knotshell' (November 2012)with border
Designing Academic Posters
Opening Lines of the Book of Zachariah. Courtesy of Flora Lamson Hewlett Library, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA. Reproduced by permission.
More Discoveries for “Otto Ege Manuscript 61”
Slice of Brie. Photograph by Coyau via Wikipedia Commons.
Say Cheese
Alcove Beside Entrance to Garneau at AZO 2017. Photography © Mildred Budny.
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Duck Family at the 2007 Congress. Photography © Mildred Budny.
2017 Congress Program
Verso of the Leaf and Interior of the Binding, Detail: Lower Right-Hand Corner, with the Mitered Flap Unfolde
A 12th-Century Fragment of Anselm’s ‘Cur Deus Homo’
Reused Leaf from Gregory's Dialogues Book III viewed from verso (outside of reused book cover) Detail of Spine of Cover with Volume Labels. Photograph © Mildred Budny.
A Leaf from Gregory’s Dialogues Reused for Euthymius
Detail of the top of the verso of the fragmentary leaf from a 13th-century copy of Statutes for the Cistercian Order. Reproduced by permission.
Another Witness to the Cistercian Statutes of 1257
Initial d in woodcut with winged hybrid creature as an inhabitant. Photography © Mildred Budny
The ‘Foundling Hospital’ for Manuscript Fragments
A Reused Part-Leaf from Bede’s Homilies on the Gospels
Detail of middle right of Verso of detached leaf from the Nichomachean Ethics in Latin translation, from a manuscript dispersed by Otto Ege and now in a private collection. Reproduced by permission.
More Leaves from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 51’
Running title for EZE on the verso of the Ezekiel leaf from 'Ege Manuscript 61'. Photography by Mildred Budny
A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 61’
Decorated opening word 'Nuper' of the Dialogues, Book III, Chapter 13, reproduced by permission
A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 41’
Leaf from the A-Group of the 'Interpretation of Hebrew Names' in 'Ege Manuscript 14'. Photography by Mildred Budny
A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’
A Reused Part-Leaf from Bede’s Homilies on the Gospels
Photography by David Immerman.
Radio Star
Close-Up of The Host of 'The Library Cafe' in the Radio Studio. Photography © Mildred Budny
A Visit to The Library Café
Booklet Page 1 of the 'Interview with our Font & Layout Designer' (2015-16)
Interview with our Font & Layout Designer
Initial I of Idem for Justinian's Novel Number 134, with bearded human facing left at the top of the stem of the letter. Photography © Mildred Budny
It’s A Wrap
The Brandon Plaque. Gold and niello. The British Museum, via Creative Commons.
Seminar on the Evidence of Manuscripts (January 1992)
© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Tiberius A III, folio 117v, top right. Reproduced by permission.
Seminar on the Evidence of Manuscripts (August 1993)
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Seminar on the Evidence of Manuscripts (September 1994)
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Seminar on the Evidence of Manuscripts (May 1989)
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Heading of Blanked out Birth certificate after adoption completed.
Lillian Vail Dymond
Initial C of 'Concede'. Detail from a leaf from 'Otto Ege Manuscript 15', the 'Beauvais Missal'. Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Photograph by Lisa Fagin Davis. Reproduced by Permission
2016 Symposium on ‘Words & Deeds’
Detail with Initial G of Folio Ivb of Bifolium from a Latin Medicinal Treatise reused formerly as the cover of a binding for some other text, unknown. Reproduced by permission
Spoonful of Sugar
Detail of Leaf I, recto, column b, lines 7-12, with a view of the opening of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 23, verse 3, with an enlarged opening initial in metallic red pigment
New Testament Leaves in Old Armenian
Decoated initial E for 'En' on the verso of the Processional Leaf from ' Ege Manuscript 8'. Photography by Mildred Budny
A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 8’
Cloth bag, now empty, for the original seal to authenticate the document, which remains intact, for a transaction of about the mid 13th-century at Preston, near Ipswich, Suffolk, UK. Photograph reproduced by permission.
Full Court Preston
The Date 1538 on the Scrap, enhanced with photographic lighting. Photography © Mildred Budny
Scrap of Information
Lower half of Recto of Leaf from the Office of the Dead in a Small-Format Book of Hours. Photography © Mildred Budny
Manuscript Groupies
Detail of cross-shaft, rays of light, and blue sky or background in the illustration of the Mass of Saint Gregory. Photography © Mildred Budny
The Mass of Saint Gregory, Illustrated
Penwork extending from a decorated initial extends below the final line of text and ends in a horned animal head which looks into its direction. Photography © Mildred Budny
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You are browsing the Blog for Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings

2019 Anniversary Symposium: The Roads Taken

March 29, 2019 in Anniversary, Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Manuscript Studies

The Roads Taken, Or, The Obstacle Course

Challenges and Opportunities for
Assessing the Origins, Travels, and Arrivals
of Manuscripts and Early Printed Materials

2019 Anniversary Symposium
of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Princeton University
Friday 26 and Saturday 27 April 2019

Co-Sponsored by The Bibliographical Society of America

Rejoined Pieces of a Leaf from a Book of Hours. Private Collection, reproduced by permission.

Rejoined Pieces of a Leaf from a Book of Hours. Private Collection.

Sponsors

Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University

The Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University

James Marrow and Emily Rose

Celia Chazelle

Barbara A. Shailor

The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies

The Plan

In 2019 the Research Group on Manuscript [and Other] Evidence celebrates 20 years as a nonprofit educational corporation based in Princeton, and 30 years as an international scholarly society founded at the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.  Across the years, we have engaged in multiple events in many places, over multiple manuscripts and other original sources, and on a broad range of subjects.  We celebrate our friends, colleagues, hosts, donors, volunteers, and subjects of study.

As part of these celebrations, we announce our Anniversary Symposium at Princeton University, host of many of our events over the years.  This event takes place on Friday afternoon 26 April and Saturday 27 April 2019.

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Tags: Book of Hours, Early Printing, History of Paper, manuscript fragments, Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Manuscript studies, Medieval Writing Materials
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Vellum Bifolium from Augustine’s “Homilies on John”

November 27, 2018 in International Congress on Medieval Studies, Manuscript Studies, Uncategorized

Recycled and Reclaimed
Large-Format Vellum Bifolium
from a Discarded Medieval Copy
of Saint Augustine’s Sermons
on the Gospel of Saint John
In Double Columns of 47 Lines

Measuring at most circa 384 mm high × 523 mm wide
< text block circa 274 × 180 mm, with columns circa 80 mm wide and intercolumn circa 20 mm >

Now in a Private Collection

[Published on 28 November 2018, with updates, continuing our series of Blogposts on Manuscript Studies, for which see the Contents List]

Augustine Homilies Bifolium Folio IIr detail with title and initial for Sermon XCVI. Private Collection, reproduced by permission. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Augustine of Hippo, Büdingen, Homilies on John the Evangelist, Isenburg, manuscript fragments, Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Medieval Writing Materials, Rotulus, Saint John the Evangelist
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A 12th-Century Fragment of Anselm’s ‘Cur Deus Homo’

January 31, 2017 in Manuscript Studies, Reports, Uncategorized

Verso of the Leaf and Interior of the Binding, Detail: Lower Right-Hand Corner, with the Mitered Flap Unfolde

Verso of the Leaf and Interior of the Binding, with the Mitered Flap Unfolded.

Tied Down

Fragmentary Leaf with Part of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo
Book II, Chapters 17–18 or

18a–b
(sumpsit eam . . . Nam cum uirg[/initatis melior])
in Latin on vellum
measuring at the most circa 307 mm tall × circa 182 mm
< written area (including ascenders and descenders)

circa 233 mm tall × 148 mm wide
with each column circa 65 mm wide

flanking the intercolumn of circa 18 mm wide >
laid out in double columns of 35 lines
written in brown ink in skilled ProtoGothic script
without embellishments

Continuing our series on Manuscript Studies, our Principal Blogger, Mildred Budny (see Her Page) reports the discovery of a reused fragmentary vellum Latin manuscript leaf extracted from a copy of Anselm’s masterwork Cur Deus Homo.  Whether as a text on its own or in the company of other texts, it was made probably in about the third quarter of the 12th century, to judge by the script, perhaps in France.  Norman, maybe?  Identifying the text and its sequence makes it possible to recognize which side of the leaf was the original recto, and which the verso.  The fragment joins the select known cast of 12th-century manuscript witnesses to this significant philosophical–theological text.

Anselm’s texts mostly took the forms of meditations or dialogues. Already our blog has showcased a manuscript with another text by Anselm: A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 41’, which formerly contained a copy of the Prayers and Meditations. Now we focus upon one of his principal dialogues, cast between master and follower, as they debate the natures of divinity and necessity.

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Tags: Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, Archbishop Anselm, Bodleian Library Bodley MS 271, Bodleian Library MS Auct D 2 6, Budny Handlist, Canterbury Cathedral, Landscapes, Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Medieval Manuscript Fragments, ProtoGothic Script, R W Southern, Theodore Phyffers, Thionville, Trinity College Cambridge MS B 1 37
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A Leaf from Gregory’s Dialogues Reused for Euthymius

December 24, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition, Uncategorized

A Leaf from Gregory’s Dialogues
Reused for Binding
A Copy of
Euthymius Zigabenus’s On the Psalms

Budny Handlist 3

In our blog on Manuscript Studies (see its Contents List), Mildred Budny (see Her Page) continues to report the results of research for her Illustrated Handlist.

Here, we focus upon a leaf plucked from its 12th-century manuscript and pressed into service, with trimmed edges and mitered folds, as the vellum covering for a binding for a different text of small format.  Both texts, primary and secondary in the life of the leaf, concern religious subjects, but they emanate from authors of different dates, locations, and languages in the Latin West and the Orthodox East respectively.  The primary text represents a remnant of a text and an author familiar in some other blogposts, which consider the Dialogues, the Sermons or Homilies, and other texts by Pope Gregory the Great (pope from 590 to 694 CE).

Reused Leaf from Gregory's Dialogues Book III viewed from recto (inside of reused book cover) with text upright and with guides. Photograph © Mildred Budny.

Handlist 3, Recto

Reused Leaf from Gregory's Dialogues Book III viewed from verso (outside of reused book cover) with text upright and with guides. Photograph © Mildred Budny.

Handlist 3, Verso

Part of Gregory’s Dialogues, Book III, Chapter 7

(on Andreas, Bishop of Fondi/Fundi):
Sections 2 (Hic namque uenerabilis uir) –
8 (uel quae in conuentu)

Present measurements:
Circa 357 × 237 mm
< written area circa 266 × 133 mm >
Single column of 28 lines
in revived Caroline minuscule
without embellishments
Germany, circa 1175

Reused for some time as the vellum cover for the binding of a copy of
Euthymius Zigabenus‘s Commentary on the Psalms
in Greek or in Latin translation?
(now lost or preserved elsewhere in a location unknown)

For this secondary use, the remnants of a set of titles on the outside of the spine of the cover (the original verso of the reused leaf) remain in place, albeit abraded and fragmented, as both a pasted, inscribed paper label (orientated along the ‘horizontal’ across the spine) and an ink inscription on the reused leaf itself in Capitals (‘vertical’, with the tops of those letters turned toward the ‘front cover’).  Another, smaller and fragmentary pasted label with a broad rectangular border stands near the bottom of the broad spine of the cover and partly overlies the ‘vertical’ spine inscription.

Reused Leaf from Gregory's Dialogues Book III viewed from verso (outside of reused book cover). Photograph © Mildred Budny.

Acquired, probably by purchase (according to the Owner’s recollections), in France in the past 15 years or so, but before 2007 when I first saw and began to photograph the leaf.   This item and others in the Illustrated Handlist acquired in France at various times and by various means (purchase, gift, or exchange), came from a single source in the Département of Saône-et-Loire, from about 1999 onward.  Because the leaf does not carry indications of its original place and time of production, apart from its materials, layout, design, script, orthography, and punctuation, those unknowns must depend upon evaluations of the style of the script, lacking any forms of embellishment, such as decorated initials, which might have provided possibly more closely datable symptoms than the letters “alone”.

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Tags: 'Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts', Binding History, Bishop Andrew of Fundi, Budny's Illustrated Catalogue, Ege Manuscript 41, Euthymius Zigabenos, Fondi, Gregory the Great, Gregory's Dialogues, manuscript fragments, Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Manuscript studies, Psalter Commentary, Saki, Temple of Apollo
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A Reused Part-Leaf from Bede’s Homilies on the Gospels

October 30, 2016 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Manuscript Studies

Bede on the Gospel of Mark

asdcv1 cropped to leaf improved

Recto of the Part-Leaf

A Part-Leaf from a 14th-Century Large-Format Copy
of Bede’s Homilies on the Gospels
(Perhaps Other Texts Too)
in Double Columns of 26 or More Lines
in Latin,
Perhaps Made in France,
Reused as a Part-Cover for Something Else, Now Discarded & Lost

Yes, we know.  Don’t know much about this part-leaf.  Why should we bother you?

You might know something, and/or, you might like to know something.  (My Kind of Person.)

I’m going ahead on the principle that Something Is Better Than Nothing.  (Ever the Optimist.  Gotta Hope For Something Good.)

Here Goes.

[Continuing our series on Manuscript Studies, Mildred Budny reports the identification of a reused and cut-down vellum Latin manuscript leaf extracted from a copy of Bede’s Homilies on the Gospels, made probably in the first half of the 14th century, perhaps in France.  Identifying the text makes it possible to recognize which side of the leaf was the original recto, and which the verso.  And there’s more to tell.]

Poster 2 for the 2016 'Words & Deeds' Symposium at Princeton University, with 2 images from the Otto Ege Collection, The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Photography by Lisa Fagin Davis. Reproduced by permission. Poster set in RGME BembinoThe extracted and reduced leaf was converted through reuse into part of the cover or wrapper for some volume or other, now unknown.  At some point, at least by the year 2016, the part-leaf was removed from that interim position and offered for sale on its own online.  It has come to its present owner recently, without record of the provenance of the leaf, or the nature and contents of its former volume, let alone of its original manuscript.

As characteristic for the problems presented by such discarded and commercially transferred medieval manuscript materials, we must resort to examining the evidence of the material itself.  Good thing, it may be, that we and other colleagues have some experience with such tasks.

Have a look, for example, at the discoveries reported in our our blog on Manuscript Studies and our colleagues’ contributions to meeting the challenges which dismembered and dispersed fragments pose, as for our 2016 Symposium on Words & Deeds and its downloadable Program Booklet.

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Tags: Aquitaine, Bede, Bede's Homilies on the Gospels, Bede's Homily II Number 6, Bede's Homily XXXVIII, Gregory the Great, Holy Saturday, Lectionary, ledger, Lesquenn, Life of Saint Blaise, Maine-et-Loire, manuscript fragments, Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Mark 7:31, Mios, Otto Ege MS 14, Terres de Losquonn
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It’s A Wrap

October 3, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition

Initial I of Idem for Justinian's Novel Number 134, with bearded human facing left at the top of the stem of the letter. Photography © Mildred Budny

Q for ‘Quem’

Laying Down the Law

A leaf from the Novellae Constitutiones (or Authenticum)
of the Emperor Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis
with Parts of ‘Novels’ Numbers 159.2 and 134.1–3
plus Embellishments

Reused as a Wrapper, with Added Vellum Tie,
for Some Other Material (now lost)

Still preserved in this folder form

Budny Handlist Number 7

 

Continuing our series of blogposts on Manuscript Studies, Mildred Budny reports on manuscripts and fragments dispersed in various ways.  Now we unveil a leaf reused as an wrapper-style enclosure or tied folder, with its own story to tell.

Legal Manuscript Leaf in Latin on Parchment
Made probably at Bologna, circa 1300 CE,
with Medieval Additions and Modern Alterations

Purchased in Florence, Italy, in June 1972

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Tags: Bolognese Legal Manuscript, Budny Handlist, David Immerman, Emperor Justinian I, Glossed Manuscripts, Justinian's Novellae Constitutiones, Legal Manuscripts, Libreria Leo S. Olschki, Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Scott Gwara, Seminars on Manuscript Evidence, Susan L'Engle, Valerio Cappozzo, Vellum Wrapper
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Cover-Up

June 17, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition

The Medieval-Psalter-Covered French Notebook in course of photography, archivally-sensitive equipment in place. Vire from the front cover, with untied ties. Photography © Mildred Budny. Reproduced by permission.

Photography © Mildred Budny

A Medieval Bifolium
From a Medium-Format Vulgate Latin Psalter
Reused as the Cover
of the Binding
of an 18th-Century Paper Notebook
With Receipts in French

Budny Handlist 5

 

Continuing our reports of discoveries about manuscripts and written materials in our blog on Manuscript Studies,
Mildred Budny examines a reused medieval fragment in its reused state, still attached to its modern notebook containing many receipts in French. Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Breviary, Dijon, French Notebooks, French Revolution, Fructidor, Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Medieval manuscripts, Napoleonic Wars, Psalter Manuscripts
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Spoonful of Sugar

April 27, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition

A Reused Medieval Bifolium from a
Latin Treatise on Medicinal Substances

13th Century?

Double columns of 57 lines
with rubricated headings
and
initials and paraph marks
rendered in alternately red or blue pigment
and embellished with extended penline-flourishes in the contrasting pigment

Detail with Initial G of Folio Ivb of Bifolium from a Latin Medicinal Treatise reused formerly as the cover of a binding for some other text, unknown. Reproduced by permissionContinuing our blog on Manuscript Studies, we illustrate a fragmentary medieval bifolium, much damaged, from a large-format manuscript retrieved (without recording the contextual information) from its long-term reuse as the vellum cover of an unknown book with a thick back.  The reuse, at an unknown stage, presumably took advantage of an out-of-date medicinal textbook.  Shame on the retrievers for not recording and letting us know the location from which the bifolium was removed.

Whereas many reused medieval manuscripts survive from discarded religious texts rendered obsolete by changes in liturgical practices and religious beliefs, for example during the Reformation, the French Revolution, or less catastrophic (r)evolutions, this case represents a relic, or battered fossil, of advances — or anyway transitions — in scientific, medical, pharmaceutical, and related spheres of knowledge in Western Europe.  Some of our posts describe the former; now we turn to the latter.  Here, we mainly allow the pictures to do the talking.

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Tags: Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Medieval Manuscript Fragments, medieval medicinal treatises
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A Part-Leaf from the ‘Life of Saint Blaise’

March 8, 2016 in Events, Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition

Part of a Leaf from the Saint’s ‘First’ Life
in a Lectionary
Reused as Binding Material

344 cropped to M[First published on 8 March 2016, with updates.]

Here continues our blog by Mildred Budny on Manuscript Studies, for which the Contents List offers a guide to the series.  Now we look at a fragment from a 12th-century manuscript containing, or partly containing, one or more saints’ lives intended for reading aloud.

A fragmentary vellum leaf in Latin now in a private collection represents a remnant of the Passio Sancti Blasii Episcopi et Martiris (‘The Suffering of Saint Blaise, Bishop and Martyr’) from a manuscript dismembered for recycled use.  Laid out in double columns, the text is written in upright proto-Gothic script of circa 1170 CE from an as-yet unknown center.

Similarly, the medieval ownership of the leaf remains unknown, although the reuse as a limp vellum cover for an 18th-century paper notebook comprising a register of receipts in French presumably indicates the location of the leaf, if not the rest of its book, at least by the early modern period.  Given the fragmentary nature of the surviving evidence, we’ll take all we can get.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Medieval Manuscript Fragments, Passio Sancti Blasii
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