2016 Symposium on ‘Words & Deeds’ Report
June 9, 2016 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Bembino, Conference, Reception, Reports
‘Words & Deeds’ Symposium Report
With the smooth accomplishment of the Symposium on ‘Words & Deeds’ at Princeton University on 25–26 March 2016, it is time for the Report.
As is our custom, the Save-the-Date Announcement and the Poster(s) for the event, as well as the Program, circulated ahead of time (both in paper and online), in stages as they called for updates. They did so, for example, as the Sponsors gathered in number, and as the event initially intended for a day’s span extended into one and one-half days, to accommodate the increasing number of Speakers, Panelists, and Sessions.
[Note: We have now corrected the next link, for the Program Booklet. It should work correctly. If not, please let us know.]
The Program Booklet, containing both the Program and the Abstracts of Papers, made its debut, as is customary, on the day itself in print. In this case, the generous donation of so many images — some of which featured in our post announcing the event — encouraged us to include a greater number and to extend across a larger number of pages than ever before for one of our Symposia. Extraordinary.
Now we publish those materials online. In addition, the happy completion of the Symposium calls for a description of its character, account of certain changes in plan, and a celebration of its enthusiastic dedication of expertise and collegial discourse.
Words & Deeds
Actions Enacted, Re-Enacted & Restored
From Late-Antique Theater to the Legacy of Otto Ege
by way of, inter alia, Saint-Denis and Gutenberg
A Symposium of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Friday & Saturday, 25–26 March 2016
106 McCormick Hall
Princeton University
Sponsors
The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
The Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University
The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University
James Marrow & Emily Rose
Barbara A. Shailor
The Samuel H. Kress Foundation
The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
We report the accomplishment of the Symposium at Princeton University on 25 & 26 March 2016. Organized by our Director, Mildred Budny, this event launched our activities for 2016. Next in line come our Sessions and Activities, both sponsored and co-sponsored, at the 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies in May. (Report here.) Further activities for the year will follow. (For example, here.)
Setting the Stage
First, in the creation of the event, came the subject or theme, subject also to variation (as described in our Announcing Post). Next came the appointed date(s) and venue. Then, in stages, came the Program (with a few changes for logistics), and with it the cast of expert contributors. This it grew beyond one day’s span. And then, on the days themselves, came the audience. Also, to accompany the nourishing Food for Thought on the Program menu, there appeared refreshments and sustenance in the form of food and drinks, fittingly to merit the stature of a Symposium. For all these gifts, we thank the hosts, sponsors, and contributors.
There was even a birthday cake, for the first day of the Symposium coincided with the birthday of 2 participants. That the day was, this year, both Good Friday in the Western Christian calendar and, as every year, the Feast of the Annunciation, did not go unnoticed. (As in some other years, 1608 CE included.) Much to think about.
First came the call to Save the Date:
Showcasing the Materials
Next came the Posters. The plenitude and beauty of images contributed to the publicity for the Symposium made it a natural choice to produce not one, but two, Posters.
The Program of the Symposium circulated in stages, as it took firmer shape. First a Provisional Program, next the Program in a 4-page booklet. Then, for the event itself, the Program Booklet was unveiled.
Recording the Plan: The Souvenir Booklet
In 24 pages, the illustrated 2016 Symposium Program Booklet records the authors’ approaches to their chosen subjects. Throughout the history of our organization and its many scholarly events or conference sessions, the Research Group encourages our speakers to provide Abstracts with description of their subjects, themes, methods, results, and the like, so as to convey a sense of the materials (which may be household names in many realms, but not necessarily in all), their interest, and their significance, allowing the audience both at the event and elsewhere afterward to discern the scope of the presentation more specifically than the titles and subtitles ‘alone’ might allow. Our updated and expanded website allows for the wider publication of these Programs-with-Abstracts, so that we progress with the work of presenting in digital form the earliest phases in the archive. (As here.)
As customary, the Booklet made its debut in printed form on the day. With the event accomplished, it now appears online in downloadable form. Those stages in publication may allow for corrections and refinements as appropriate.
Here, they involve two minor refinements, with the update for one title consistently in its 2 appearances (in the Program and among the Abstracts) and the correction of a typographical error for another, in the move from the booklet as distributed in print at the event to the booklet published on our website and circulated in printed form after the event. Thus, the form of the Booklet records the event in the form which corresponds to the authors’ intentions, as it applies the final proof-correcting remedies.
We thank the authors for their Abstracts, as well as their Papers. For the accompanying images and the permission to reproduce them, we warmly thank Brigitte Bedoz-Rezak, Mildred Budny, Raymond Clemens, Lisa Fagin Davis, Genevra Kornbluth, Barbara A. Shailor, the Otto Ege Family, and the Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Manuscript and Rare Book Library, Yale University.
The Booklet, like the Posters and the Save-the-Date Announcement, is set in our copyright font Bembino and laid out according to the Research Group’s Style Manifesto. We thank their compiler and designers.
The CopyCat Editor
Acknowledging assistance for the work of compiling and editing the Booklet allows us, with permission, to cast the spotlight on its expert CopyCat Editor. While that work continued apace, there was the occasion to serve as caretaker for a splendid, finicky, Editorial Assistant. Or OverSeer. You might understand if I mention that, from time to time, she chose to Lay Down On The Job. #purringincluded. And who could complain. Her ability to pin down the specifics of the editorial work, annotations included, is plain to see. We thank her guardians for permission to include her image here. A post for our blog on Manuscript Studies gives a light-hearted view of her contributions to the work of shaping, revising, and refining the editorial work: Center Fold.
Refinements to the Plan
One adjustment occurred in the Program, changing the plan as scheduled beforehand. Illness on the day prevented Karl F. Morrison from attending or presenting his paper.
The record of Karl’s intentions for its essence stand as a place-holder in the Abstracts published in the Program Booklet. At the event, Mildred Budny read out the “False Start = First Steps” which Karl sent at first accompanying the text of his Abstract, as an earlier (or rather, more-or-less coeval) draft describing his reflections toward his paper as the plans for the Symposium expanded. This preliminary Synopsis, along with its Completed Draft, appears here, in a First in the history of our published Abstracts of Papers for Events. We always welcome advances for our traditions.
The full text of Sarah Celentano’s paper is now posted on Academia.edu.
By request, plans advance for publishing some of the papers, perhaps as a group.
Speakers, Moderators, Panelists
With the development of the planning for the event, so did the assignment of rôles for contributors settle into place according to their wishes. The list of Speakers here can serve also as an alphabetical Index of the Authors of the Abstracts, as published in the Program Booklet.
Moderators
Charles E. Barber (Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University)
Catherine Fernandez (Index of Christian Art)
Beatrice Kitzinger (Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University)
Henry Schilb (Index of Christian Art)
Barbara A. Shailor (Yale University)
Alan M. Stahl (Firestone Library, Princeton University)
Speakers
Elizabeth A.R. Brown (The City University of New York Emerita)
Mildred Budny (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
Sarah Celentano (Art and Art History Department, University of Texas at Austin)
Raymond Clemens (Beinecke Library, Yale University)
Giles Constable (School of Historical Studies Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study)
Lisa Fagin Davis (The Medieval Academy of America)
Jessie Dummer (Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania Libraries)
Paula Gerson (Department of Art History, Florida State University Emerita)
Genevra Kornbluth (Kornbluth Photography)
Karl F. Morrison (Rutgers University Emeritus)
Katherine Philbin (Simmons College)
Dot Porter (Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies)
Lynn Ransom (Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies)
Thomas G. Waldman (Department of History, University of Pennsylvania)
Andrew Walker-White (School of Arts and Science, Stratford University)
Eric White (Firestone Library, Princeton University)
Panelists
Mildred Budny
Celia Chazelle (Department of History, The College of New Jersey)
Pamela Patton (Index of Christian Art)
Lynn Ransom
Lynn Ransom (Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies)
Barbara A. Shailor
Exhibition Curator
Jessica Savage (Index of Christian Art)
The illustrated Exhibition Notes are included in the Program Booklet.
Some Speakers and Moderators joined the Round-Table Discussion, as did other Colleagues. As the discussion unfolded, Speakers, Moderators, and members of the Audience joined in the reflections, as well as the informal resolutions for further action and activity, especially for the future of manuscript studies overall.
Round Up: The
Then, Giles Constable offered the eloquent Concluding Remarks, which reminded us of the unusual, refreshing characteristics of such Symposia and Colloquia as the Research Group organizes, mostly at short notice. Responding to the subject and the aim, contributors may present work-in-progress and/or share in the Round Table, without years’ long preparation as such for the event — apart from their lifelong preparations to this point. Thus, it may be, the presentations in these Symposia could have a freshness of activity and directness of interest, unlike, say, some more formal and elaborate lectures of conferences organized years in advance.
Both approaches, long-term and close-up, have their place in the progress of study, research, analysis, dissemination, and refinement. We happily recognized, through Giles’s clear exposition, the value of our approach, within its apposite and welcoming place.
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Themes & Variations
As we announced ahead of time, and as it unfolded in action, our symposium fulfilled its intentions of engaging with the realms of documents, seals, seal matrices, and other means of authentications or attestations, regarding deeds in material forms as well as deeds in action. Chronicles, biographies, and other narratives (both real and imagined) shared a part in the story, too, along with illustrations of events and inscriptions in a variety of media. The interrelationship, or tensions, between words and events came into focus as well. The span for consideration welcomed a range of dates, languages, regions, materials, forms of activities, and interactions – harmonious or otherwise.
Likewise, we addressed issues posed by objects which carry within the confines of their present borders most of the evidence, apparently, to reveal their purposes through words and/or images. Such is the case, poignantly, given the vagaries of history (from whatever causes, natural or not), with fragments dispersed from former whole objects or groups of objects, from collections or sites to individual monuments.
And so the Symposium and its discussions during the Sessions, refreshment Breaks, and Round Table focused on these and other predicaments, challenges, and opportunities.
For example, some speakers considered the complex achievements of the Abbey of Saint-Denis in its creation of an exceptional identity. Others celebrated the research and discoveries facing the study and recovery of manuscript remnants from the collection of Otto F. Ege, especially the trove newly acquired from his descendants at the Beinecke Library of Yale University. Approaches to assessing, representing, and understanding the material evidence of manuscripts in digital forms were surveyed in reports on new developments at The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies.
As planned, the subjects for consideration ranged from the evidence for experiencing the theater in Late-Antiquity and the paradox of ‘deadly love’ in Western Christian Medieval liturgy, through amulets and sealed medieval deeds, to the lost Hortus deliciarum (‘Garden of Delights’), the bronze doors of Abbot Suger at Saint-Denis, and papal indulgences printed on the Gutenberg press before the Gutenberg Bible.
Round Table
The Round Table discussion vividly explored experts’ experiences and views about these and related issues. Inspired by Barbara Shailor’s expressed concerns for consideration, we considered such challenges as
- maintaining standards for the quality of metadata accompanying digital images of manuscripts and other materials
- monitoring the continuing practices of booksellers dismembering volumes so as to sell their parts piecemeal
- providing opportunities for undertaking research on dispersed bodies of evidence
- evaluating online resources for medieval studies, including fora in which younger scholars might find appropriate and respectable publishing venues (such as blogs), and
- exploring the formation of an international organization or society for Manuscript Studies.
Thus Round Table responded constructively to Barbara’s forthright question: “What Next?”
Exhibition
An accompanying exhibition, curated by Jessica Savage (Index of Christian Art), displayed newly selected materials from the archives of Charles Rufus Morey at the Index of Christian Art. It focused on ‘Words & Deeds of Charles Rufus Morey at the American Embassy in Rome (1945–1950)’. Exhibition Notes appear in the Symposium Program Booklet.
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Previews, Views & Reviews
As the Symposium approached, our Symposium Announcement offered some background for subjects which speakers and panelists would address. As a preview, we chose there to consider ‘The Otto Ege Connection’. Below we offer some updates about that connection, in the context of the Symposium and beyond. But first we consider another connection which the Symposium explored in various ways.
The French Connection
To the Report of the event, we now add some background about the focus upon materials from France which various speakers addressed, in more than one Session. Serendipitously it emerged that a French Connection found its way into numerous parts of the proceedings.
Some of the manuscripts or fragments which passed through the hands of Otto Ege came from France, as observed for most of the images below, in our updated note on The Otto Ege Connection. Also, Katherine Philbin’s paper reported collective research which has made it possible to identify and to reconstruct parts of ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 47’, a late 15th-century Book of Hours for the Use of Troyes (with a virtual reconstruction online via Reconstructing Ege FOL 47). Her Abstract, included within the Symposium Program Booklet, tells more about the research and the results.
Another Book of Hours, partly dismembered, from France received attention in Mildred Budny’s “Introduction to the Symposium” and its Abstract (“The Back and Forward Story”) in the Program Booklet, which includes an image of the opening of the volume showing the despoiled decoration at the beginning of Vespers. Made circa 1400, with texts in Latin and French, and now in private hands, this manuscript contains the Hours of the Virgin for the Use of Rome, as well as a Calendar and Litany for Troyes. Both this “Introduction” and the Demonstration Session exhibited highlights of the collaborative study of the manuscript by our Trustee Adelaide Bennett and our Director, with a suggested reconstruction of the contents of its lost elements.
French materials of other kinds than manuscripts as such received consideration as well.
Brigitte M. Bedos-Rezak examined the significance of tactile contact in validating documentary records, from graphic subscriptions through autograph signatures to wax seals, from the 10th to 13th centuries, with poignant French examples of subscriptions and fingerprints sealed upon the wax. Genevra Kornbluth’s explorations of forms of amulets in the early medieval period, in a comparative analysis of Byzantine and Northern and Western European examples, combined a study of the objects, inscriptions, and other sources. Among the notable cases figure Merovingian amulets, “made of special materials and in special shapes”. As customary in Genevra’s work, the examination of material evidence is aided greatly by her expert photography, showcased on her website Kornbluthphoto.com. (The first issue of our RGME-newsletter ShelfMarks reviews more aspects of her photographic expertise.) Both Brigitte and Genevra generously gave images to illustrate their Abstracts in the Program Booklet.
In surveying the French Connection in our context, it is worth noting that one Abstract, with which Karl Morrison considers “Deadly Love in Western Christian Liturgy”, hinges upon a citation from Fleurs du mal (1857) by Charles Baudelaire.
One whole Session considered “Texts, Inscriptions & Intentions at the Abbey of Saint-Denis”, particularly during and relating to the time of Abbot Suger (circa 1081–1151; ruled 1122–1151).
Paula Gerson treated us to reflections and partial reconstructions of the lost bronze doors of the central portal to Suger’s west façade for its Basilica, dedicated in 1140. Paula’s paper builds and advances upon her published paper on “Abbot Suger’s Central Portal Bronze Doors: A Study in Text and Image” (pages 19–30), in “Per una severa Maestra”. Dono a Daniela Romagnoli (2014) ISBN: 978-88-6261-437-5.
Elizabeth A.R. Brown and Thomas G. Waldman jointly reported results of their long-term research on the manuscripts and charters of the abbey at the time of Abbot Suger and beyond — with particular focus on Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 2013. This complex historical miscellany was compiled and copied at the abbey about 1117 and 1120/1129, with the addition circa 1160 of Suger’s “Life of Louis VI”, King of France from 1108–1137. Selected pages and details of pages with decoration from the manuscript can be viewed online via enluminures.culture.fr. Close analysis of the contents, scripts, and characteristics called for contextual examination of the abbey’s charters, its oldest cartulary (Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouvelle acquisition latine 326), and the collection of texts in a manuscript closely linked to Saint-Denis (and to MS 2013) as well as to monastic houses in Hainault (Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS latin 12710). The results call into question some prevailing assessments of the nature of the Mazarine manuscript.
The Otto Ege Connection, Updated
The illustrated description in the Symposium Announcement gave a brief introduction to the challenges presented by manuscripts collected and dispersed by Otto F. Ege (1888–1951), and the painstaking and sometimes serendipitious rediscovery of some of their fragments — as reported, for example, in some posts for our own blog on Manuscript Studies and in Lisa Fagin Davis’s Manuscript Road Trip blog. With some suggestions for reading and browsing, this Note offered some background for Barbara Shailor’s Session at the Symposium on ‘Words & Misdeeds: The Ege Family’s Commitment to Manuscript Studies’, which considered the recent acquisition of materials, both fragments and whole manuscripts(!), from the Otto Ege Family by the Beinecke Library of Yale University. The announcements of that accomplishment whetted the appetite: Beinecke Library acquires ‘treasure trove’ of medieval manuscripts from Otto Ege and Yale Buys Collection of Scattered Manuscript Pages.
The preview Note revealed glimpses of some pages which belong to that significant acquisition, with photographs made by Lisa Fagin Davis and with permission of the Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Manuscript and Rare Book Library, Yale University. Here, in this update, we may provide further explanations of their subjects for which the earlier captions (both in the Announcement and the Program Booklet) did not have space.
The ‘Otto Ege Manuscript’ Numbers here refer to the numbering system (1–50) which Ege applied to the sequence of specimens which he selected from Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts, Western Europe: XII–XVI Century, assembled in Portfolio sets of fifty leaves each from the same fifty manuscripts, with other leaves from those manuscripts distributed in other ways. (Hence the painstaking and sometimes serendipitous discoveries.) These Numbers form the basis for the lowest numbers in the standard ‘Otto Ege Manuscript’ Numbers (up to 325 and counting) in Scott Gwara’s book on Otto Ege’s Manuscripts: A Study of Ege’s Manuscript Collections, Portfolios, and Retail Trade, with a Comprehensive Handlist of Manuscripts Collected or Sold (2013).
- Illustrated initial A for Adam on a leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 44’. Opening of I Chronicles in Volume I of a dismembered and dispersed Lectern Bible in Latin made in Germany, Austria, or Bohemia, and dated 1507. The initial illustrates a geneaological Family ‘Tree’ with branching scrollwork showing the male descent from Adam onward, in 9 patriarchal half-length figures and the bare-chested First Man, all identified by inscriptions.
2. Illustrated initial T for Tobias on a leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 44’. Opening of the Book of Tobias in Volume I of the same dismembered and dispersed Lectern Bible in Latin made in Germany, Austria, or Bohemia, and dated 1507. The initial illustrates an interior scene of Tobias and the Angel Raphael (disguised as Azarias) standing at a bedside, upon which lies Tobias’s father Tobit, apparently at the point of the healing of his blindness — through the angel’s recommendation of fish gall.
3. Illustrated initial C for Concede quesumus omnipotens deus: ut qui hodierna die (“Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God . . . “) in a dismembered Missal in Latin with musical notation made in Northern France in the late 13th century for the Use of Beauvais on a leaf from ‘Otto Ege MS 22’ (‘The Beauvais Missal’). The magnificent gold-framed initial encloses a branching, scrolling woody stem with 5-lobed fig-like leaves; at either side of its base crouch a small white dog-like creature and a larger brownish hare looking up toward the right. In the margin outside the initial, a long-legged and long-necked bird, perhaps a stork, crane, or heron, clamps its eel-like prey disappearing between its jaws. (A virtual reconstruction of the identified remnants of this book appears online in the Beauvais Missal Reconstruction.)
4. Illustrated initial R for Resurrex[i] on a leaf from ‘Otto Ege MS 22’. Opening of the introit Resurrexi et ad[huc] tecum (“I am risen and behold I am with you”) presumably for Easter Sunday in a dismembered Missal in Latin with musical notation on 4-line stages made in Würzburg circa 1325. The panel-like gold-framed initial illustrates the emergence of Christ, draped in a red robe, arrayed with a cross-nimbus, bearing a banner, gesturing in blessing, and showing his wounds, as he rises from the opened sepulchre between 2 sleeping soldiers. The uneven row of holes above the initial remain from a protective veil of some sort formerly stitched to the leaf.
5. Illustrated initial P for Pauci (‘Very few’) on a leaf from ‘Otto Ege MS 35’. Opening of Book I of Saint Jerome’s treatise (‘Against Jovinianus’; English translation here) in a dismembered copy made in France circa 1450. The initial illustrates the scribal author Jerome, accompanied by his lion, crouching at the left, while the saint sits at work writing his text in an interior with a tiled floor.6. Illustrated initial I for In, on a leaf from ‘Otto Ege MS 14’. First page of Genesis, beginning In Principio (“In the Beginning”), from a dismembered large-format Lectern Bible produced circa 1325 perhaps in Flanders or Northern France. The full-page initial contains a vertical row of 8 square panels with roundels enclosing scenes with 1 or more full-length or part-length figures. They depict episodes from Creation to the Crucifixion. Extensions from both initials (beginning Chapters 1 and 2) and the ornamental vertical bars framing the second column of text provide foliate and animate motifs, including birds, dogs, and dragon-like bipeds. (A preliminary reconstruction of many identified remnants of this book appears in our blogpost on the A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’.)
The illuminated initial on this page was chosen for each of the Posters announcing the event, including the Save-the-Date Announcement and both illustrated Posters. The full page appears as Figure 1 in the Program Booklet, while a detail from another page, which opens the Book of Revelation, appears as Figure 8.
Riches indeed!
Fragments as Essence, and the Recovery of Evidence
While new and on-going research makes strides in the study of fragments — to which category belong most materials from the late-antique and medieval worlds (among others), even if the objects themselves might survive more-or-less intact — we continue to aim for integrated studies, as the new field of ‘Fragmentology’ might be, rather than fragmented studies as such. Hence our gathering of scholars in wide-ranging fields, with many points of potential overlap.
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We thank our Speakers, Moderators, Panelists, and Sponsors for their generous contributions to this event.
We thank Barbara Shailor, Lisa Fagin Davis, and Raymond Clemens for providing images of materials in the Otto Ege Collection.
We thank them and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, for granting permission to use those images in announcing the Symposium.
An Update: In June, Lisa Fagin Davis reported the discovery of An Otto Ege Treasure Trove in Maine, with images from the Beauvais Missal and the Wilton Processional = ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 8’ (the subject of our blogpost on A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 8’). More to learn!
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Please watch this space for updates.
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The Agenda for our 2016 Business Meeting (at the 2016 Congress in May) offers a concise guide to our current activities, aims, and requests. Available here.
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