Chloe Peters
(University of Toronto)

Abstract of Paper
presented at the 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies
(Kalamazoo, 2025)

Session on
“Deviant Images:
Text/Image Relationships in Medieval Manuscripts
(2): Sacred/Secular”

Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Organized by
Mildred Budny (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
and
Courtney Anne Berg (City University of New York)

2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

“Games on the Edge:
Ludic Marginalia on the Borders
of a 13th-Century Latin Bible“

Abstract:

Scholars of medieval marginalia often treat the image as stand alone object or a mere representation of the text. However, as more and more scholars view marginalia within the context of the manuscript as a whole, it is becoming more evident that marginalia interacts with its corresponding text in specific and complex ways that my not always be understood by modern viewers, but would most likely have been understood by contemporary readers. One such example of this in the manuscript of the Bibla Porta (Lausanne, MS U 964). The Bibla Porta is an illuminated Latin manuscript of St. Jerome’s Vulgate version of the Bible that was created in France at the end of the 13th century and contains over 300 decorative illustrations including several marginal images depicting medieval ludic games.

Though games were important in medieval society gaining knowledge and improving skills while also displaying status and power, their depiction in a 13th-century biblical manuscript is less that evident at first glance. As the marginalia of ludic games are not the sole iconographic theme that is present in this manuscript, this paper will seek to understand the relationship between both the ludic and non-ludic imagery and the text itself. For some marginalia, this is quite straightforward, such as the depiction of Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden in the Book of Gensis. However, the depictions of games of chance, strategy, and athleticism, on the other hand, are seemingly unrelated. Through a combination of textual and iconographical analysis, as well as drawing upon the symbolic meaning of specific medieval games from other contemporary texts, this paper will argue for the purpose of mnemotechnic marginalia as an aid for understanding texts as well as a connection to collective memory and identity in medieval society.

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