2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo: A Failed Plan

January 5, 2025 in Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Event Registration, Events, Manuscript Studies, RGME Colloquia, University of Waterloo

NOW OLD:
Plans have changed.
See
2025 RGME Autumn Colloqium on Fragments

and

2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo with background

—————

[Note: This outdated post remains as a record
of the first intentions for the event
and its first six months of preparation]

2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium
at the University of Waterloo

“Break-Up Books
and Make-Up Books:
Encountering and Reconstructing
the Legacy of Otto F. Ege
and Other Biblioclasts“

Friday to Sunday 21–23 November 2025
in Hybrid Format (pending funding)
or Online by Zoom

Colloquium ‘Home Page’
for information and updates

[Posted on 5 January 2025, with updates. As of June 2025, the University of Waterloo is not a co-sponsor or host for the event. The renewed version of the initial plan retains its structure, but not that location or partner, while it honors the commitment by contributors who responded to the initial call.

For the revised version at Princeton, see

2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium on Fragments.

For background on the necessary change, see 2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo.]

Motto

“Yet will I leave a remnant, that ye may have some that shall escape the sword among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through the countries”
— Ezekiel 6:8

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf from a Book of Hours, Recto.

By request, in collaboration with the University of Waterloo, the RGME prepares a special 2025 Autumn Colloquium on the phenomena of widely dispersed remnants of dismembered manuscripts and other written materials scattered at the hands of biblioclasts such as Otto F. Ege (1888–1951), for a variety of purposes more and less laudable. We will showcase work being done in various centers and by many individuals on these materials, as part of long-term, laborious, significant, and sometimes dispersed research to identify, reclaim, and, insofar as possible, virtually reconstruct the originals and place them in context.

We seek to gather perspectives on the challenges and opportunities presented by the dispersed manuscript or other materials which survive, albeit disordered or reordered, after passing through the hands of collectors-turned-biblioclasts, for whatever reasons.

A main focus, given the number and variety of projects dedicated to them, will be the manuscripts and other materials dispersed by Otto F. Ege and his collaborators, notably his wife/widow Louise and the New York book-dealer and book-breaker Philip C. Duschnes (1897–1970). Yet, not least because many of their remnants have joined or become intermixed with fragments dispersed by others and through diverse processes in varied collections, it is worthwhile to consider that complex factor for their effective study as well.

We seek to showcase the work of these projects, compare notes about issues and methods of research, and set the legacy of those biblioclasts in the context of others working as predecessors, contemporaries, or followers, as they also redirected the course of manuscript and related studies by disrupting and dislocating its evidence.

The ‘delivery methods’ of dispersal range from assemblages of sets of fragments as specimens in Portfolios, Leaf-Books, Albums, Scrapbooks, or Loose Leaves which might circulate in mats with or without labels, on their own, or in groups sans identifying information. In effect, many of these remnants were cast out on their own as no-name ‘orphans’ whom expertise, serendipity, and circumstance might recognize as ‘foundlings’ or find forever homes, whether virtual or actual. (See The “Foundling Hospital” for Manuscript Fragments.)

Our Colloquium highlights the processes of recovery by multiple, interlinked, and interlocking means, as we gather representatives from the fields of manuscript studies and fragmentology to share their stories, processes, progress, and accomplishments.

New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Otto F. Ege Collection, Leaf in Ege’s Mat from ‘Ege MS 14’. Opening page of the Apocalypse / Revelations in a large-format Lectern Bible in the Latin Vulgate Version. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Scope

The University of Waterloo and the RGME propose to co-host an international Colloquium with hybrid functionality, for access by a wide audience with interests in multiple subjects. Our two educational organizations in Canada and the United States respectively combine experience and skills to produce a scholarly event with companion publications pre- and post-event, to promote and disseminate research work and discoveries in multiple, interrelated fields of study.

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf with music and notation for liturgical chants: Recto.

Our plan takes its starting point from the wish to gather expertise and perspectives from a different collections of manuscript materials — such as at the Medieval DRAGEN Lab (Digital Research Arts for Graphical & Environmental Networks — and the rich variety of new and long-term projects (both institutional and individual) dedicated to research on the medieval Western manuscripts despoiled and dispersed by Otto F. Ege and his collaborators.

These initiatives include the new project by the Cantus database (Cantus: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant – Inventories of Chant Sources) to produce a database of the musical manuscript fragments in Ege’s Portfolio of Fifty Original Leaves from Western Manuscripts (FOL). This notorious Portfolio was issued in multiple sets now widely dispersed in public or private collections through North America and beyond. Like others of Ege’s Portfolios, some sets are lost, or lost track of; some have themselves become fragmented, as parts have been removed, as specific manuscript specimens were further disjointed from their relatives, original or newer companions in the biblioclasts’ assemblages. Some of these ‘orphans’ or cast-offs have lost their identifying Ege mats or labels, further to complicate the issues of identification, recognition, and retrieval.

The RGME’s long-term project of research in these fields focuses on the variety of Ege’s Portfolios overall. Dedicated to specific genres of books, such as Famous Books or Famous Bibles, they include not only manuscript fragments but also a multitude of printed materials ranging from incunabula (up to the year 1500) to the twentieth century; all were selected and arranged by Ege and his circle as specimens of the graphic arts and book arts for instruction and display. (For examples, see our blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List for Ege materials.)

Private Collection, Leaf from ‘Ege MS 14’. Part of the Book of Jeremiah, Recto, Detail. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Research on the surviving evidence on many fronts and in multiple centers can bring expertise to bear upon specific genres (such as manuscripts containing music). So, too, it reveals the processes of workshop practices over decades in the destruction, re-constitution, and further distribution of the original books. For example, such elements have bearing upon the provenance of individual fragments and potential impact upon that of other fragments whose provenance might not otherwise be known.

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from Otto Ege MS 14, recto. Photograph by Richard Weber.

Given the progress of these and other projects in various centers concerned with Ege’s legacy, the time is right to bring their representatives (established scholars, curators, collectors, and others, as well as younger scholars) together to compare notes, showcase their work, and strengthen contacts between individuals and centers across borders.

By examining the book-breaking practices overall by “Ege & Co.” in the wider context of biblioclasts over time, including many of Ege’s contemporaries, predecessors, and followers, we might gain fuller knowledge of the individually as well as collectively destructive habits and their legacy. Likewise by comparing notes, surveying the results so far of different projects, and, it might be, identifying more of the seemingly lost fragments in unknown or unexpected places, our Colloquium could cross thresholds and open more gateways to wider knowledge.

Such larger contexts provide wider horizons and more comprehensive awareness of the destructive tendencies towards books in given times and places. They can demonstrate, by examination and comparison, the particular characteristics or ‘style’ of the collector, book-breaker, book-seller, and the resulting forms as altered pieces or bodies of evidence for the lost and damaged originals. Among notable predecessors for the genre can be counted the albums of “visually appealing” manuscript fragments created by Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) or the cuttings prepared by John Ruskin (1819-1900) and others.

Examining the complex legacy of these various re-creators of medieval manuscripts and other written materials and the range of projects dedicated to them from perspectives and fields of many kinds, sometimes integrated across a broad spectrum encompassing expertise in the arts and sciences, can advance knowledge in individual projects as well as in wider discourse relating to the transmission of written evidence from generation to generation and century to century, with losses, discoveries, and reconstitutions along the way.

Our focus for the co-sponsored Autumn Colloquium is the legacy of book-breakers, book-destroyers, and book-recreators active in multiple centers in Europe, the British Isles, and North America (at least), with the fragments produced by their activities and transmitted to diverse locations worldwide, often without appropriate identifying information. Our task, as receivers of the evidence from such disruptions, is to make sense of the evidence, identify it appropriately, recognize its characteristics as bodies of witnesses with a complex history, compare information about diverse projects (in many centers) relating to these materials, gather feedback, and disseminate the results to a wide audience.

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf from a Book of Hours, Recto, detail.

Purpose

This 2025 Colloquium stands within the long tradition of symposia, colloquia, workshops, and other scholarly events of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, now entering its second quarter-of-a-century as a nonprofit educational corporation based in Princeton, New Jersey. The RGME is dedicated to the study of manuscripts and other written records across the centuries. This year our theme is “Thresholds and Communities”.

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf with music and notation for liturgical chants: Verso.

For the 2025 Autumn Colloquium on 21–23 November, the RGME collaborates with the University of Waterloo and its range of programs and projects, including the Cantus Database and the DRAGEN Lab.

The Advisory Committee for the Colloquium comprises:

Mildred Budny, Director, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Debra Lacoste, Cantus Database, University of Waterloo; The Institute of Mediaeval Music; Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission, Dalhousie University
David Porreca, Associate Professor; President, Faculty Association of the University of Waterloo; Co-Director, Medieval Studies Undergraduate Program; Department of Classical Studies and Department of History, University of Waterloo

Spanning three days with half-days on Friday and Sunday, the Colloquium will include a series of sessions with presentations and Q&A, roundtable discussions/panels, hands-on workshops, and exhibitions of several kinds.

To augment the scholarly sessions of presentations and discussions, we plan for displays of original materials in manuscript or other forms and demonstrations of the sounds of music represented in medieval manuscript fragments. Among them is a SoundWalk which allows passersby to access audio recordings of specific musical passages preserved on medieval leaves in collections including the DRAGEN Lab and the Cantus Database.

A Reception ending each day’s sessions will lead from the scholarly program to further conversations.

Participants

Participants represent a wide range of interests, approaches, subjects, centers, and materials.

Speakers, Respondents, Panelists, Hosts, and Presiders

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. Photography by Mildred Budny.

Participants include (in alphabetical order):

Alison Altstatt (University of Northern Iowa)
Steven Bednarski (DRAGEN Lab, University of Waterloo)
Mildred Budny (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
John P. Chalmers (Retired)
Katharine C. Chandler (University of Arkansas)
Lisa Fagin Davis (Medieval Academy of America)
Juilee Decker (Rochester Institute of Technology)
Augustine Dickinson (University of Hamburg)
Scott Ellwood (Grolier Club Library)
Steven Galbraith (Rochester Institute of Technology)
Hannah Goeselt (Massachusetts Historical Library)
Scott Gwara (University of South Carolina and King Alfred’s Notebook LLC)
Elizabeth Hebbard (Indiana University Bloomington and Peripheral Manuscripts Project)
Josephine Koster (Winthrop University)
Debra Lacoste (University of Waterloo, Cantus Database, and Dalhousie University)
David Porreca (University of Waterloo)
Eleanor Price (University of Rochester)
Agnieszka Rec (Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library)
Irina Savinetskaya (Syracuse University)
Kate Steiner (Conrad Grebel University College and University of Waterloo)
Anna Siebach–Larsen (University of Rochester)
Richard Weber (Independent Scholar)
N. Kıvılcım Yavuz (University of Leeds)

And others . . .

Some Results

RGME tradition produces illustrated Program Booklets for major events such as this Colloquium, with participants’ abstracts and selected accompanying illustrations, to grant insider glimpses for our audience (at the event and after) not necessarily familiar with the wide range of subjects and materials under discussion.

A recent example from our 2024 Autumn Symposium “At the Helm” can be downloaded from the RGME website:

2024 Autumn Symposium Booklet

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf from a Book of Hours, Recto, with the Opening of the Liturgical Kalendar for the Month of February.

We explore sources of funding and sponsorship for the event as a whole. Information about the results would emerge as these explorations advance. Our aim is to have an in-person event with online access (for speakers and audience) for a fully hybrid colloquium; the online functionality would occur by Zoom Meetings (rather than Webinars with closed access). If funding proves elusive for the in-person facets as well, the event will take place online by Zoom.

We hope to welcome you to the Colloquium.

*****

Note: For information about the RGME Autumn Colloquium as it develops, please continue to visit this ‘Home Page’.

For related RGME events, please see, for example:

2025 Spring and Autumn Symposia

Registration

To register for RGME events, please visit:

RGME Eventbrite Collections

To register for the Autumn Colloquium, we offer portals to attend online or in person respectively.

1) Register for ONLINE Attendance

2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium: Tickets for ONLINE Attendance

2) Register for IN PERSON Attendance

2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium: Tickets for IN PERSON Attendance

Registration Fees

Circumstances lead us to charge a modest registration fee to attend this 3-day event. The extra costs for preparations in several formats and from different locations require a registration fee to help to offset them.

When you register, we ask you please to add the Eventbrite handling fee for the transaction, as a contribution to the RGME’s costs for this event.

1) General Attendance: $60 US per person

2) Student Discount for Official Students: $35 US per person. When registering for the discount, please let us know your registered affiliation as a student.

The registration fee is waived only for Speakers and Presiders, for whose contributions we give thanks.

We also encourage you to consider adding a Voluntary Donation in support of the RGME, a Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization principally powered by volunteers. See:

We thank you for your support and your interest in the Colloquium.

*****

Questions? Suggestions?

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf from a Book of Hours, Recto, with the Liturgical Kalendar for the Month of February: Top.

Leave your comments or questions below
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Among them are the

2025 Spring and Autumn Symposia (online or hybrid)
Episodes of “The Research Group Speaks” (online)
RGME Workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.” (online, in person, or hybrid)
Meetings of the Friends of the RGME (online)

Please consider making a Donation in Funds or in Kind for our nonprofit educational corporation powered principally by volunteers. Your donations and contributions are welcome, and can go a long way. They may be tax-deductible to the fullest extent provided by the law.

We thank the hosts, co-organizers, advisers, and participants for generously contributing to this Colloquium.

*****

Waterloo, University of Waterloo, DRAGEN Lab, Vellum Leaf from a Book of Hours, Verso.

Tags: Albums of Manuscript Fragments, Biblioclasts, Broken Books, CANTUS Database, Dispersed Manuscripts, DRAGEN Lab, Early modern printing, Fragmentology, Leaf-Books, manuscript fragments, Manuscript studies, Medieval manuscripts, Otto Ege Portfolios, Otto F. Ege, Philip C. Duschnes, RGME Colloquia, University of Waterloo
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2025 Spring and Autumn Symposia

December 31, 2024 in Announcements, Conference Announcement, Manuscript Studies, RGME Symposia

2025
RGME Spring & Autumn Symposia

Agents and Agencies
in the Shaping
or Re-Shaping of Books

[Posted on 30 December 2024]

As in 2023 and 2024, for 2025 the RGME prepares an integrated pair of Spring and Autumn Symposia (as Parts 1 and 2 for the year). For those predecessors, see:

2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia,
with the year’s Theme of “Structures of Knowledge”
2024 Spring and Autumn Symposia”,
with the year’s Theme of “Bridges”

This year, they respond to our Theme for the Year, “Thresholds and Communities”.

First Steps

London, British Museum. Door-sill carved as a carpet. From Room I, door c, the North Palace of Ashurbanipal II at Nineveh. Photograph (2014) Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

First, in January 2025, to set the stage, our first Episode for the year for our online series “The Research Group Speaks” explores the theme of “Thresholds and Communities” and describes the year’s planned projects and activities. Their centerpiece is the pair of Spring and Autumn Symposia. For this episode and the theme, see:

Episode 19. “At the Gate”

This event and other activities through the year prepare the ground, follow-up, and follow-though for the Spring and Autumn Symposia.

The Interlinked Pair
of Symposia

British Library, Royal MS 14 E. v, vol. 1, fol. 3r. Image Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Following the momentum of activities and enthusiasm in our 2024 Anniversary Year, the pair will draw upon the customary informal, but structured, approach of our events, symposia included.

These Symposia will take place online (like both our 2023 Symposia and our 2024 Autumn Symposium). Perhaps parts of them will also occur in-person (like our three-day 2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College in hybrid format and our 2025 Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo planned for hybrid format).

The dates and titles for these Symposia have been set. Details of their Programs are taking shape, as we continue to make preparations.

Agents & Agencies

As principal focus, our 2025 Symposia consider the myriad aspects and impact of agents and agencies (human and other) in the creation, dissemination, use, abuse, re-creation, safe-guarding, and enjoyment of books across time and place.

I. Spring Symposium (Part I of 2)

“Makers, Producers, and Collectors of Books:
From Author/Artist/Artisan to Library”

Friday to Sunday
28–30 March 2025 by Zoom

We explore the genesis and gestation of books, from first thoughts to processes of production leading to the finished product, and then to their owners and users.

For example, for the first stages, we might consider the author alone in his or her study, putting pen to page or thought to written word. Around him might, naturally, whether close at hand or in his memory or imagination, stand other books as examples or sources of inspiration, imitation, or perhaps plagarism.

British Library, Royal MS 14 E. 1, vol. 1, fol. 3r. Image Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Note on the Image. Frontispiece/headpiece for the first volume of the Speculum Historiale (or Miroir historial) by Vincent of Beauvais (1184/1194 – c. 1264) in the Old French translation by Jean de Vignay (circa 1282/1285 – c. 1350). Bruges, circa c. 1478–1480, for Edward IV (1442–1483, king from 1461–1470 and again from 1471-1483). On this page, at the front of Vincent’s text, above its opening columns of script, the author sits as scribe in a book-furnished study, framed within an architectural arcade and set within an elaborate border containing the king’s arms below.

The work of composing, copying, revising, and producing draft, fair, or final copies of the texts (with images where and as indicated) could be undertaken by more than one author, artist, and/or artisan. If so, would they work in tandem, sequence, or competition? Well, that might depend.

Aachen, Schatzkammer, Aachen Gospels, fol. 13r. The Four Evangelists at Work. Circa 820. Image via Karolingischer Buchmaler um 820, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

As the work progresses, there arrive further stages which create the issue or publication of the book, which then may enter the world in processes of dissemination, instruction, and incorporation within an individual or collective collection — or, it might be, from collection to collection, in one shape or another. The changed shapes could, of course, pertain to the book itself and/or the ownership.

In the image below, we draw attention to the large, closed volume being held diagonally by a figure at far right, as he faces toward the king at the center. Given its context within the book and its historical setting, that very volume would contain as its frontispiece the image which we see here. Designed and engraved by Sébastien Le Clerc (1637—1714), the scene depicts an idealized visit by the king, Louis XIV of France (1638–1715, ruled from 1643), to the Académie Royale des Sciences founded in 1666.

Sébastien Leclerc I, Engraving on paper. King Louis XIV visits the Académie Royale des Sciences in an idealized view. Image Public Domain.

Note on the Image. Engraving on paper by Sébastien Leclerc I (1637–1714), 1671. Within a large room overlooking the gardens and containing a multitude of specimens, scientific apparatus, and other materials for study, Louis XIV (1638–1715, King of France from 1643) visits his Royal Academie des Sciences in an idealized view. Image Public Domain.

Various large-scale publications by this Academy employ Le Clerc’s image as their monumental frontispiece. Among them would be one held in this image by its author, as identifiable from images during his lifetime.

*****

II. Autumn Symposium (Part 2 of 2)

“Readers, Fakers, and Re-Creators of Books:
From Page to Marketplace and Beyond”

Friday to Sunday, 17–19 October 2025 by Zoom

In the Autumn Symposium, we follow up the explorations of the Spring Symposium as we turn to consider the ‘afterlives’ of books once they reach their audience, whether through the marketplace or other modes of presentation and distribution. Such conditions may acquire a life of their own, as readers, annotators, users, owners, thieves, despoilers, and others had or took a hand in shaping or reshaping their destinies — that is, of the books, those agents, and book history.

As examples, we may point to readers who would reshape the pages by placing their comments, revisions, scribbles, or sketches upon them. So, too, forgers as well as plagarists might appropriate others’ work as their own, say by reshaping its structure, grafting on other pieces, or extracting parts to re-assemble and redistribute in other forms for their own purposes. Such might occur, for example, as leaves or scraps were extracted, cut into further pieces, perhaps refolded, and reused as coverings or parts of bindings for other texts (manuscript or printed), or for other repurposed materials.

Justinian Wrapper folded from back with flap.

Budny Handlist 7: Medieval Leaf reused as Folder. seen from Back with Flap and Tie. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

A different form of reuse concerns the fragmentation of books for the purpose of extracting leaves or part-leaves to serve as specimens of script, decoration, illustration, and/or graphic design.

The 2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo in November 2025 is designed, picking up the pieces, to showcase the legacy of such despoilers or ‘biblioclasts’ who dispersed the fragments of manuscripts and printed books far and wide. The 2025 RGME Autumn Symposium considers such phenomena within the larger context of the ‘afterlives’ of books in many other forms as well.

New Acquisitions Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in November 2016: View of Some Parts of "Otto Ege Manuscript 14".

“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”.

The rôles of forgers, fakers, and frauds as agents in the production, re-creation, and distribution of books looms large in the history of books, perhaps from time immemorial. Our Symposium sets their activities or accomplishments into the context of “Agents and Agencies” as we examine the broad setting of books overall.

*****

Watch this space as the plans take shape.

For our activities planned for 2025, see:

2024 Activities and 2025 Planned Activities

*****

Registration

To register for each symposium or both, please visit the RGME Registration Collection.

RGME Events

Registration is free. We encourage you to make a volunteer donation when you register, to help support our nonprofit educational corporation powered principally by volunteers.

After you register, the Zoom Link for the online event or the online functionality of a hybrid event will be sent to you before the event.

Eventbrite Registration

Episode 19. “At the Gate: RGME Activities for 2025”

Thank you for joining us!

*****

Questions? Suggestions?

Leave your comments or questions below
Contact Us

How to Join our Community

Visit our Social Media:

our FaceBook Page
our Facebook Group
our X/Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
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Join the Friends of the RGME.

Please make a Donation in Funds or in Kind for our nonprofit educational corporation powered principally by volunteers. Your donations and contributions are welcome, and can go a long way. They may be tax-deductible to the fullest extent provided by the law.

*****

Christine de Pizan, La cité des dames, in the copy in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Français 1179, folio 3 recto. Image Public Domain via gallica.bnf.fr.

*****

Tags: "Thresholds and Communities", Books as Agents, Manuscript studies, RGME Symposia, The Agency of Books
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Episode 19: “At the Gate: Starting the Year 2025 at its Threshold”

December 27, 2024 in Announcements, Event Registration, Manuscript Studies, Research Group Episodes for The Research Group Speaks, Research Group Speaks (The Series)

“The Research Group Speaks”
Episode 19
“At the Gate:
RGME Activities for 2025”
A Roundtable

Saturday 18 January 2025
1:00–2:30 pm EST (GMT-5) by Zoom

[Posted on 28 December 2025, with updates]

London, British Museum. Door-sill carved as a carpet. From Room I, door c, the North Palace of Ashurbanipal II at Nineveh, Iraq. 645-640 BCE. Photograph (2014) Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

To open our events for 2025, our first Episode of the year in the online series wherein “The Research Group Speaks” positions us “At the Gate” as we embark on a year with a Theme dedicated to “Thresholds and Communities“.

Here we discuss the aims and structures of our series of activities and projects for 2025, as their organizers, co-organizers, advisors, and participants join an informal roundtable.

We invite you to join us to learn about the plans as they develop, and contribute feedback as we start the year’s program.

Following Episode 18 in December 2024 on “Women as Makers of Books” at the close of our Anniversary Year, this next Episode introduces the Theme for the New Year, as it launches the suite of our multiple activities for 2025.

We introduce our Theme for the Year and present the plan for our events and publications.

Our Theme for 2025:
“Thresholds and Communities”

Our activities will address a wide variety of subjects, fields of study, and genres of materials as we focus especially upon original sources, representing witnesses to writing in multiple forms. They include manuscripts, printed books, maps, music, works of art, epigraphy, and other forms, in keeping with our interests in a rich variety of sources from the past and recent past.

Some activities continue strands and momentum from 2024 activities. For example, the 2025 Spring and Autumn Symposia build upon the accomplishments of the highly successful series in 2024 by focusing upon Special Collections and original materials and their uses for study, teaching, and more.

London, British Library, Harley MS 4431, fol. 4r.Christine de Pisan sits at work writing in an interior accompanied by a dog. France (Paris), c. 1410 – c. 1414. Image via https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/06/christine-de-pizan-and-the-book-of-the-queen.html.

London, British Library, Harley MS 4431, fol. 4r. Christine de Pisan sits at work writing. France (Paris), c. 1410 – c. 1414. Image via https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/06/christine-de-pizan-and-the-book-of-the-queen.html.

Similarly we build upon the inspiration of two Episodes for “The Research Group Speaks” which formed bookends or pendants for our Anniversary Year in January and December. The former considered the roles of Women Writers from the Medieval to Post-Modern Periods. The latter addressed Women as Makers of Books, by considering not only functions as authors but also activities as authorial book-designers or as calligraphers, illustrators, compilers, and editors, such as for successful serial publications.

The pair of Episodes focused upon the agency of women in and for books.

In 2025, we propose to examine, among other subjects, the multiple types and forms of agents and agencies in the making, producing, disseminating, collecting, reading, using, abusing, re-creating, and transmitting of books across time and place. Our programs shape accordingly.

Watch this space, and come to our Episode 19 to hear about the plans. We welcome your feedback and participation.

Panelists and Subjects

Panelists for our Roundtable include:

Phillip Bernhardt–House, Mildred Budny, Hannah Goeselt, Justin Hastings, and others.

Topics to consider include the processes of choosing the subjects, approaches, and structures of the events in their interconnected series. Our Speakers may describe the thought-processes, explorations, research, and consultations which underpin this creativity.

Plans for the year work to shape individual events or their series, and to integrate them into the full suite of events and publications of the RGME for the year round. Attendees are invited to offer suggestions and volunteer to participate in the events and their organization as well as their follow-up.

Episodes of “The Research Group Speaks”
Workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.”
In-Person (and hybrid) Visits to Collections
Co-Sponsored 2025 Digital Medieval Studies Institute in Boston/Cambridge (March)
2025 Spring and Autumn Symposia
— Spring Symposium. “Makers, Producers, and Collectors of Books, From Author/Artist/Artisan to Library”
— Autumn Symposium. “Readers, Fakers, and Re-Creators of Books, From Page to Marketplace and Beyond”
2025 Autumn Colloquium
2025 Conference Activities:
— 2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) at Kalamazoo in May
— 2025 International Medieval Congress (IMC) at Leeds in July
Meetings of the Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Competitions for the Friends (such as Favorite Recipes for an RGME Recipe Book),
— Prizes Included
Masterclasses (by Request)

Rome, Capitoline Museums, Front panel of a sarcophagus representing the four seasons. Marble, Roman artwork, middle of the 3rd century CE. Photograph by Jean-Pol GRANDMONT. Image via Capitoline Museums, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via

Reflections on the Theme

In this living context, our Speakers may address the Year’s Theme of Thresholds in wider ramifications.

1) Liminal Deities

Vatican City, Vatican Museums, Museo Chiaramonti, section XIV, no.17. Janus-type Double Herm. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek original. Image via Wikimedia via Creative Commons 3.0 Unported.

For example, Phillip Bernhardt–House might survey some rituals and divinities or beings whose charge or domain occupies, or relates to, thresholds of various kinds from antiquity onward. Among them are numbered

Janus, the Roman “God of all beginnings, gates, transitions, time, choices, duality, doorways, passages, and endings” (Janus)
Hecate, the Greek goddess of boundaries, crossroads, doorways, and city walls
Cardea, the Roman goddess of health, thresholds, and door hinges and handles
Heimdall, the Norse god associated with boundaries, borders, and liminal spaces
Hermes, Greek god of roads, merchants, travelers, trade, thievery/thieves, cunning, and animal husbandry; messenger of Zeus and psychopomp (“guide of souls). In particular, Hermes is associated with particular types of oracles (the Astragalomanteia and the Kledones; see also Cledonism and Cleromancy), as well as with words, language, and magic — comprising some of the most liminal but connective and ‘commercial’ activities of all.
Mercury, Roman messenger god and psychopomp; equivalent to the Greek Hermes, sharing some of his functions, such as being a god of commerce, travelers, merchants, and thieves.

London, British Museum, Drawing of a Hekate Triformis, perhaps as a Hekation or shrine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

2) Thresholds as Emblems

Our Director would briefly describe characteristics of Thresholds/Portals/Gateways, as exemplified or embodied in language, literature, art, architecture, religion, ritual, and imagination. Such reflections have sometimes guided RGME and related activities, as with the Symposium held at Princeton University for our 2009 Anniversary Year.

Gathering At the Threshold: A Celebratory Symposium

As motto, she proposes a quotation from the introduction to the first issue of a short-lived periodical by the polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) under the name Propylaen (July 1798–1801). Regarding that enterprise, it can be observed that:

Through its German name, “Propyläen” (from the Greek προπύλαιον, propylaion, pl. προπύλαια, propulaia, an entryway to a building), which can be translated to English as “Propylaea“, the periodical, including its various themes, was to represent a uniquely cultural “entryway”; and thus, it symbolized the building that is life into which the artist is required to enter.

— Propyläen

Goethe’s Birthplace: Goethe-Haus, Grosser Hirschgraben, Frankfurt-am-Main, Innenstadt. Image: Dontworry, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Selected as a motto at the start of her own Ph.D. Dissertation (London, 1985), Goethe’s classic “Introduction” (Einleitung) to his serial publication states a sobering observation from eloquent and perhaps prescient experience.

THE YOUTH (Jüngling), when Nature and Art attract him, thinks that with a vigorous effort he can soon penetrate into the innermost sanctuary; the Man, after long wanderings, finds himself still in the outer court.

Such an observation has suggested our title. It is only on the step, in the gateway, the entrance, the vestibule, the space between the outside and the inner chamber, between the sacred and the common, that we may ordinarily tarry with our friends.

In German:

Der Jüngling, wenn Naur und Kunst ihn anziehen, glaubt mit einer lebhaften Streben bald in das innerste Heiligtum zu dringen; der Mann bemerkt, nach langem Umherwandeln, daβ er sich noch immer in den Vorhõfen befinde.

Eine solche Betrachtung hat unsern Titel veranlaβt: Stufe, Tor, Eingang, Vorhalle, der Raum zwischen dem Innern und Ausern, zwischen den Heiligen und Gemeinem kann nur die Stelle sein, auf der wir uns mit unsern Freunden gewönlich aud halten werden.

—— Preface to Propyläen

Sesterce of Nero, 54-68 AD, Reverse: Temple of Janus with Closed Doors. Patrick H. C. Tan Collection. Image: Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons

Registration

Please register to attend this online Episode. Registration is free, and we invite you to make a volunteer donation when you register, to help support our nonprofit educational corporation powered principally by volunteers.

After you register, the Zoom Link will be sent to you before the event.

Eventbrite Registration

Episode 19. “At the Gate: RGME Activities for 2025”

Thank you for joining us!

*****

Questions? Suggestions?

Leave your comments or questions below
Contact Us

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Join the Friends of the RGME.

*****

Paris, Porte Saint-Denis, from the South. Image: Photograph (10 September 2011) by Coyau / Wikimedia Commons/ via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Porte_Saint-Denis_01.jpg.

*****

Tags: "Thresholds and Communities", Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, Gates and Gateways, Janus, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Liminal Deities, Manuscript studies, Propylaen, RGME Roundtable, RGME Theme for the Year, The Research Group Speaks
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2025 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: RGME Program

December 9, 2024 in Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Events, ICMS, International Medieval Congress, Leeds, Manuscript Studies

2025 International Medieval Congress
at Leeds:
RGME Program

32nd Annual IMC
Monday to Thursday 07–10 July 2025
(with In-Person and Virtual Components)

“Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning”
(3 Sessions + Roundtable)

“Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge”
(1 Session)

Congress Theme: “Worlds of Learning”

Private Collection. Stereoscopic Photograph of Bridges of Paris, circa 1850s.

[Posted on 8 December 2024, with updates]

Building upon the successful completion of our RGME Inaugural Session at the International Medieval Congress (IMC) at the University of Leeds in July 2024, and responding to the strength and numbers of proposals for our Call for Papers for the IMC in 2025, we announce the Program for our sponsored activities at next year’s Congress.

For information about the Congress, see

its official website and
the Padlet Page showing the range of organised sessions advertising for papers (as part of the Call for Papers, now completed).

“Worlds of Learning” at Leeds in 2025

The Thematic Focus for the IMC in 2025 is “Worlds of Learning”. The broad scope is described in the general Call for Papers: IMC 2025 – ‘Worlds of Learning’.

The worlds to explore in and for learning are wide. We look to manuscripts as carriers, portals, and thresholds, in keeping with our chosen theme for 2025 RGME activities, “Thresholds and Communities”.

Our Aims

Our set of interlinked events planned for the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME) focuses on the power and potential of manuscripts to contain, convey, and embody worlds of learning within their span. In effect, given their structure and contents, as we approach them as beholder, user, reader, student, teacher, or admirer, they may carry worlds in our hands.

How might medieval manuscripts do so, variously for their medieval audience, later intermediaries, and our own times? How might and do they function as “Worlds of Learning” in their own right/write? We explore.

As interest has grown, the two sessions (plus roundtable) which we planned for “Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning” grew into three (plus roundtable), amounting to four events. See:

Call for Papers for “Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning”

We also present a Session with Papers devoted to “Game Knowledge and Knowledge of Games”, which follows up a strand in our RGME Inaugural Session this year.

“Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge”: An RGME Session for IMC 2025

Following in succession the close of the Call for Papers, our choices for the programs for the sessions and roundtable, and the acceptance of all these sessions plus roundtable by the IMC, we present

a suite of events containing three Sessions with Papers accompanied by a Round Table with Discussion, all dedicated to “Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning”
(Monday 7 July 2025)
a Session with Papers dedicated to “Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge: A Global Perspective on How Manuscripts Conserve and Transmit Ludic Knowledge”
(Tuesday 8 July 2025)
Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Games of Knowledges, International Medieval Congress, Knowledge Games, Manuscript studies, Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning, University of Leeds, Worlds of Learning
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2025 Annual Appeal

November 26, 2024 in Announcements, Manuscript Studies, RGME Annual Appeal

2025 Annual Appeal
for Donations
to Support
our Mission and Activities

We invite you to join our 2025 Annual Appeal, as the Research Group rounds out the extraordinarily successful 2024 Anniversary Year with its theme of Bridges (see below), and prepares for the future.

In 2025 the Research Group will mark:

26 years as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational corporation based in Princeton, New Jersey
36 years as an international scholarly organization founded in Cambridge, England, as part of a major research project at the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College.

Cahors (Lot), France, Pont Valentré. View of the western part of the bridge from southeast. Photograph (24 September 2024) by Benjamin Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Now, moving into a new quarter-century as a nonprofit educational corporation, we seek your help to continue with our work, maintain our organizational operations, and advance with our activities and their planning. As a nonprofit educational organization “Without Members”, we must turn to donations from individuals and institutions, supplemented by grants, where available, and by the pro-bono contributions which power most of what we can do.

As an organization with no employees, and no paid fund-raisers, we must depend upon our own time and efforts, with advisers, to identify the needs of the organization as we prepare its activities, which are accomplished on our own or in association with other organizations, institutions, and initiatives. Likewise, we prepare and circulate the appeals for specific purposes and goals which funding and other contributions could make possible.

Without the polish, performance, and expense of professional fund-raising functions, we speak from the heart as we encourage you to accompany us on the quest for aid for our 2025 Annual Appeal. Because our endowment is slender, we have to turn instead to donations for the annual expenses of the corporation and for aspects of the various activities and publications. In this way, you can have the confidence of knowing that your donations can have a direct impact in sustaining and fostering the RGME from day to day and year to year.

The 2025 Appeal Letter

The signed 2025 Appeal Letter gives a collective statement of our needs and goals. It concisely lists our achievements, progress, aims, wishes, and gaps-to-fill in going forward.

The 2025 Appeal Letter is signed by supporters who ask for your help.

Dear Friend of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME),

We write to you to ask for your support for our nonprofit educational corporation for the future.

In 2024, for our Anniversary Year, we undertook a variety of activities in support of our mission. They included:

Holding our Spring & Autumn Symposia “Between Past and Future”, including the invited Spring Symposium at Vassar College (hybrid), plus an Anniversary Symposium “Manuscript (HE)ART”, with published booklets
Hosting Episodes 15-18 of our online presentation series, “The Research Group Speaks”
Sponsoring and co-sponsoring three sessions at the 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS)
Sponsoring an Inaugural RGME Session at the 31st International Medieval Congress at Leeds (IMC)
Co-sponsoring a pair of webinars for “Medieval Women’s Networks”
Launching the series of RGME Workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts”
Conducting our 2024 “Between Past and Future” project, funded by The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation

Your generous donations for our 2024 Annual Appeal, Anniversary Endowment Appeal, and events (totalling $22,000) helped greatly to support our work and on-going projects and to grow our endowment.

In anticipating 2025, in addition to funding such ongoing programs as “The Research Group Speaks”, symposia, conference sessions, workshops, research projects, publications, and invited visits to public and private collections, we have five main goals:

Expanding our very modest endowment (now up to $4,750) to stabilize our ability to cover ongoing costs
Building “The Constable Fund” (so far $3,850) for work by the RGME on manuscript and related studies, to honor Giles Constable (†2021), medieval historian, Honorary Trustee, and long-time mentor for our organization
Augmenting donations (normally about $5,000 in a good year) so as to meet annual operating expenses, which have risen to about $17,000, including urgent needs now for our website hosting and management
Supporting our overworked, unpaid Director with funded administrative assistance, needed now more than ever

For details, please see https://manuscriptevidence.org/wpme/2025-annual-appeal.

Signed

Adelaide Bennett Hagens, Trustee
Celia Chazelle, Department of History, The College of New Jersey
Jennifer Larson, Advisory Board
David Porreca, Trustee and Department of Classics, University of Waterloo
Anna Siebach–Larsen, Director, Rossell Hope Robbins Library
and Koller–Collins Center for English Studies, University of Rochester
Mildred Budny, Director and Founder Trustee

For Download Here

We offer the 2025 Annual Appeal Letter for download here:

2025 Annual Appeal Letter
or https://manuscriptevidence.org/wpme/download/19571/

For background and further information from last year’s ground-breaking work toward 2025 and beyond, please see:

2024 Anniversary Appeal Letter + Appendix

Accomplishments and innovations of our 2024 Anniversary Year are cited below.

Also, for your convenience, here is our Donation Form if you wish a printout:

Donation Form

You might use the form to send checks to the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence. Online methods are listed below.

Would you please help with these aims?

In sum, we seek funding and other forms of assistance (pro bono expertise, goods, etc.) for our work and the pursuit of our mission.

We invite you to join the team!

Ways to Donate Online and Other Ways

Ways to contribute?

There are many ways to help: Funds, Goods, Expertise, Time. All can help our work and mission.

For suggestions, see:

1) Via Mightycause:

2) Via Paypal, Venmo, ApplePay, Pay Later, or Debit or Credit Card:

Floral border on the detached leaf from a 15th-century Book of Hours

Photography © Mildred Budny

Please leave your Comments or questions below, Contact Us, or visit

our FaceBook Page
our Facebook Group
our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
our LinkedIn Group
our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List

Donations and Contributions

Donations and contributions, in funds or in kind, are welcome and easy to give. See:

Contributions and Donations.

We look forward to hearing from you.

*****

Tags: 2024 Anniversary Appeal, 2025 Annual Appeal, Bridges, Bridges of Paris, Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
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The Latin Vulgate Bible Leaf in the Farrell Collection, Part 3: The Full Leaf

November 14, 2024 in Announcements, Event Registration, Manuscript Studies, Research Group Workshops, RGME Lending Library, RGME Library & Archives

The Latin Vulgate Bible Leaf
in the Collection of Jennah Farrell

Part 3: The Leaf Revealed in Full

Single Leaf from the Book of Numbers
now unframed
Laid out in double columns of 46 lines in Gothic Script

Size of leaf =
maximum circa 29.3 cm. tall × 20.1 cm. wide
(circa 11 9/16 in. × 7 15/16 in. )

< ruled writing area
circa 18.7 × 12.5 cm. (circa 7 3/4 × 4 7/8 in.)>

[Posted on 13 November 2024]

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Manuscript Leaf in Frame. Photograph by Jennah Farrrell.

Now that the manuscript leaf has been removed from its modern frame (see Part 2 in this series of blogposts), we display photographs of both sides of the leaf uncropped, showing its full extent at present.

We do so especially to prepare for the pair of online Workshops which we plan so as to crowdsource information, expertise, and collaboration. We invite a shared exploration to learn and teach more about the leaf, its original manuscript, its context within its genre of book and other relatives from the same center, period, or region, and perhaps also its travels from its date and place of origin in medieval Europe to its present collection in the United States.

About the frame and information about the collection from which Jennah Farrell acquired the leaf in its frame, see Part 2 on Provenance:

Latin Vulgate Bible Leaf in the Collection of Jennah Farrell, Part 2

Part 1 introduced the leaf in its frame, in the state in which it reached the RGME Lending Library for photography, conservation, research, and teaching:

A Latin Vulgate Leaf from the Book of Numbers (Part 1)

Now for Part 3 we focus on the leaf itself, including the evidence which its outer portions and its entire back side, formerly hidden, can reveal.

Side 1

This side faced forward in the former frame.

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Single Leaf from the Book of Numbers in a Medieval Latin Vulgate Bible manuscript. Full extent of the leaf, unframed: Recto. Photography by Mildred Budny.

Side 2

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Single Leaf from the Book of Numbers in a Medieval Latin Vulgate Bible manuscript. Full extent of the leaf, unframed: Verso. Photography by Mildred Budny.

Releasing the Leaf from the Frame

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Manuscript Leaf: Back of Frame. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Removing the leaf from its frame employed a set of tools 1) to unscrew the mounting hinges and hanging wire, 2) release the backing paper glued to the back edges of the wooden frame, 3) detach the heavy staples which clamped a sheet of foam board to the framing mat, and 4) lift the mat to release the leaf.

Tools to Open the Frame and Left-over Pieces from the Frame containing the Farrell Bible Leaf. Photography by Mildred Budny.

The pieces of the frame are now kept together: stained wooden frame, sheet of glass, windowed mat, foam board, backing paper, staples, and hanging nail. The leaf is now kept in a clear archival L-sheet housed in an archival document binder.

Both Sides Now in View

Released from the frame and its mat, the leaf can be seen to have about 5 cm. more from top to bottom and about 4 more cm. from side to side. Revealed are the full extent of the margins and parts of the foliate decoration of the ornamental bars which extend from the chapter initials in three columns of the four in the layout of two columns per page or side of the leaf.

Revealed too is the marginal correction for the text entered in the outer margin on the verso and the remnants of the stitching line at the inner edge or gutter of the leaf, where an uneven cut along the full length of the leaf severed it from its formerly conjoint leaf in its original manuscript.

Can you tell which side of the leaf is the front, or original recto, and which is the back, or original verso?

Do you recognize, or would you like to discover, which manuscript the leaf came from when it was cut out of its book and separated from its relatives, to enter the world as a single leaf on its own, suited for framing and display such as on a wall?

Would you like to help us to learn about it?

A Pair of Workshops for this Leaf

We plan two RGME Workshops on Looking at Manuscripts, the first in a new series, to introduce the leaf and learn how to identify its probable date and place of origin, as well as its former manuscript and its context among relatives. Our challenge is to discern what the leaf might itself have to say about these different stages, and what we might discover about its original identity, its former manuscript, and its dispersal.

Both workshops will be held online by Zoom, for which registration (free) is required.

1) Workshop 1 introduces the leaf and sets the groundwork.

Sunday 17 November 2024 at 1:00-2:30 pm EST (GMT-5) by Zoom

Workshop 1: Registration

2) Workshop 2 follows up the lines of investigation as we might collectively compare notes and refine our inquiries more fully to understand the leaf and its relatives.

Sunday 16 December 2024 at 1:00-2:30 pm EST (GMT-5)

Workshop 2: Registration

After you register, the Zoom Link will be sent to you a few days before the event.

Beginners and experts welcome!

*****

About our new series of Workshops on Looking at Manuscripts, see:

The Bridge of Signs

We have been waiting for the opportunity, occasion, and resources to bring to our community for workshops, online and/or in-person, collectively to explore original source materials. With the RGME “Lending Library” as well as our own materials in the RGME Library & Archives, and with our time-tested habits of online events as well as in-person workshops, we launch our new series in a mobile approach to bring together original sources and a community interested in studying them and teaching with them.

Please join our expedition!

*****

Suggestion Box

Please Contact Us or visit

our FaceBook Page
our Facebook Group
our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
our LinkedIn Group
our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List

Would you like to help?

*****

Tags: Jennah Farrell Collection, Latin Vulgate Bibles, Manuscript studies, Medieval manuscripts
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Visit to the Collection of Steven Lomazow, M.D.

October 3, 2024 in Announcements, Event Registration, Manuscript Studies, Uncategorized, Visits to Collections

RGME Visit to the
Collection of
Dr. Steven M. Lomazow

of American Magazines
and Other Sources

Saturday 16 November 2024

In-person visit,
with hybrid component
for an online virtual visit (by Zoom)

“I can read you like a magazine”
— Taylor Swift, Blank Space (2014)

[Posted on 1 October 2024, with updates]

The Periodical Collection of Steven Lomazov, St. Nicholas: Scribner’s Illustrated Magazine for Girls and Boys, Front Cover (November 1873), via https://www.americanmagazinecollection.com/st-nicholas-scribners-illustrated-magazine-for-girls-and-boys-2/.

By special invitation, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence prepares to visit the private collection of Dr. Steven M. Lomazow — neurologist, book-collector, member of The Grolier Club, author, bibliographer, raconteur, and curator of exhibitions from his collection assembled over half a century. By design, this in-person visit by the RGME to his home in West Orange, New Jersey, might gather other Princeton bibliophiles and students, as our organization combines interests, resources, and organizational skills with other groups in the Princeton area and beyond, according with our traditions for in-person and online events alike.

Mindful also of responsibility to our wider audience, as customary, the RGME will provide a hybrid approach to this occasion, with a virtual component for part of the curated visit, so that parts of our wider community might attend from a distance by Zoom allowing for discussion and feedback.

Grateful for the invitation, we look forward to the visit with its opportunity for a curated tour of an extraordinary collection for many interests assembled over more than fifty years.

The Plan on the Day

We aim to arrive at the Lomazow Collection about 11:00 or 11:30 am EST (GMT-5), mindful of traffic conditions between our base at Princeton (or elsewhere for other attendees) and the location of the collection. The online component of the visit might commence at about 12:30 pm, in time for the introduction to the collection.

First, Dr. Lomazow and his wife will host a welcoming repast catered at home from a renowned bagel shop. We would ask attendees for dietary requirements.

Next, Steven will give an introduction to the collection, the materials, and their discoveries. This account would set the stage by describing the collection, how it grew, what it contains, how widely it reaches into spheres of history, literature, popular culture, and more, and how it is arranged — by groups of materials and by their size, each in alphabetical order for ease of discovery and consultation.

Then we would be able to visit the different rooms, examine their original materials, ask questions, and enter into conversations about the varied aspects of these original sources and their contexts. Thus we might learn from the materials and from each other while engaging with the original sources. Whether in person or virtually, we might count those encounters in real time as Break Out Rooms for the visit, with tailored focus for specific items, genres, and subjects.

We would end at about 5:00 pm, although perhaps some of us might remain for discussion until about 7:00 pm. The span is subject to exploration governed by numbers and interests of attendees.

For transportation from Princeton and back again, we could explore alternatives. Depending on interest and timetables, some of us might wish to drive; depending on numbers, transportation might be arranged. Please let us know your preferences and watch this space for developments as the preparations advance.

What would you like to see? Given this generous opportunity, it might be difficult to single out specific magazines, dates, or genres, because the range of the collection is so extraordinarily varied, with something for almost everyone’s taste, and with very much for historical and cultural study. What might you choose?

The Collector

Steven Lomazow, M.D., is a board-certified neurologist in practice for 43 years.

His published works on bibliophilic and related subjects include series of reference works, celebrations of the collection, and monographs on presidential medical-historical subjects.

Looking forward to conversations with and feedback from our varied audience, both expert and general, Dr. Lomazow offers this special occasion with the RGME for opportunities to examine his varied collections and learn about them, in conversation with the knowledgeable collector. A variety of publications, in print and online, present the materials and reference perspectives on their context.

Books, Blogs, Catalogues, Exhibitions, and Virtual Exhibitions

- Magazines and the American Experience:
  Highlights from the Collection of Steven Lomazow, M.D.
  americanmagazinecollection.com

Magazine History: A Collector’s Blog Documenting and illustrating the history, importance and the joy of collecting magazines

American Periodicals: A Collectors’ Guide and Reference Manual (West Orange, New Jersey: Lomazow, 1996)

The Great American Magazine: Adventures in History. Selections from The Steven Lomazow Collection of American Periodicals (West Orange, New Jersey: Lomazow, 2014)

Steven Lomazow et al., Magazines and the American Experience: Highlights from the Collection of Steven Lomazow, M.D. A Catalogue published in conjunction with an exhibition held at The Grolier Club, January 20 – April 24, 2021 (New York: The Grolier Club, 2020).

“The exhibition is presented in two sections, beginning with a chronological history of American magazines from 1733 to the present. The second is devoted to a broad spectrum of genres which address the areas of popular culture that became a major focus of American magazines in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including American artists and humorists, the ongoing struggle of African Americans to achieve equality, a salute to our national game of baseball, and the development of radio, television, and motion pictures.”

Companion Virtual Exhibition at the Grolier Club: American Magazines

Also:

Steven Lomazow (with Eric Fettman), FDR’s Deadly Secret (New York: BBS Publications, 2009)

Fdr’s Deadly Secret: A supplement to our book dedicated to the understanding of the health of our thirty-second president

FDR Unmasked: 73 Years of Medical Cover-ups That Rewrote History (Amsterdam: Lugler Publications, revised edition, 2024). FDRUNMASKED.com

What is in Store?

Dr. Steven puts it succinctly. The collection contains

“Thousands of exquisitely rare and historically important items.

“The collection contains virtually every major magazine highlight ever published from the eighteenth century to the present and covers virtually every topic- literature, politics, technology (TV, Radio, Movies, Aviation etc). It also includes by far the largest collection of first issue pulp magazines (over 850) in existence. Any institution or individual that acquires it will immediately become one of the leading repositories of American popular culture. . . . There are hundreds of feet of shelves occupied by bound volumes and individual issues.”

— Magazine Collection for Sale (2011)

Many items are destined for exhibition and perhaps transfer to other institutions. This visit offers an in-depth opportunity to examine them on display in situ in the company of the collector, who has built an exceptional collection of a variety of genres, including American magazines from their beginnings, patriotic magazines in World War II, and more.

Registration

Registration is required for attendance, whether in person or online by Zoom. Numbers of attendees for the at-home visit are limited; in case of need, we will create a Waiting List.

Registration is free. We welcome voluntary donations for our section 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization equipped with slim financial resources and powered principally by volunteers with donations in funds and contributions in kind. Such donations help to sustain and foster our mission and activities. Your donations may be tax-deductible to the fullest extent permitted by law.

Please register through the RGME Eventbrite Portal, which presents all our Collections of events. Here are the ways to register for the visit in hybrid formats.

1) To attend In Person

In Person Visit to the Collection of Steven Lomazow M.D.

2) To attend Online by Zoom

Virtual Visit to the Collection of Steven Lomazow M.D.

After you register for online attendance, you will be sent the Zoom Link a few days before the event.

Questions or Suggestions?

Do you have special requests for materials you would like to see in the collection during the visit? Questions for the collector? Would you like to share your experiences with growing up with American magazines?

Please Contact Us or visit

our FaceBook Page
our Facebook Group
our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
our LinkedIn Group
our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List

We look forward to hearing from you.

*****

Update: Having successfully accomplished the visit, we offer a report. See

RGME Visit to the Lomazow Collection: Report

2024 Anniversary Survey

August 14, 2024 in Announcements, Manuscript Studies, Surveys

RGME
2024 Anniversary Survey

[Posted on 14 August 2024]

In our 2024 Anniversary Year, we invite you to fill out a short Survey, to gather feedback and help us guide future activities of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence. In tune with the year’s Theme of Bridges, the Survey builds a bridge between the organizational groundwork of the RGME and our audience near and far, as we move toward the future. The Survey is open to all.

New York, Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.769, fol. 305v, detail. (Weltchronik or World Chronicle, Regensburg, Germany, 1360). Image © Morgan Library, New York, via https://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/215/143938

The Goals

The results would aid us to learn about your interests and wishes as we:

launch the Friends of the RGME with meetings, competitions, and prizes to welcome our wider community;
prepare for our Anniversary Episode in September to celebrate “RGME Retrospect and Prospects” (Episode 17 of our online series “The Research Group Speaks”); and
assemble an Anniversary Anthology to celebrate our our 2024 Anniversary Year as part of our program of RGME Publications.

Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga: The mid 15th-century Saint Vincent Panels, attributed to Nuno Gonçalves. Image (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Nuno_Gon%C3%A7alves._Paineis_de_S%C3%A3o_Vicente_de_Fora.jpg) via Creative Commons.

We welcome your suggestions and feedback.

Please note that this Survey is designed to gather feedback for our in-house use, to guide our planning better attuned to our community.

Respecting privacy and confidentiality, we might at some time report aggregate views from the Survey, but without giving names. Please feel free to give your responses in confidence.

Please join our explorations of RGME identity, purpose, impact, and futures as we reflect on past accomplishments and explore new content ideas for the direction of future symposia, meetings, and publications.

2024 Survey

The short survey should take less than ten minutes to complete.

Methods

We offer the 2024 Anniversary Survey in two forms, for respondents with or without access to Google Workspace.

as an interactive Google Form
as a downloadable Word Document
Please send this completed form in Word as an email attachment 1) to rgme.surveys@gmail.com or 2) by mail to the RGME at 46 Snowden Lane, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540, U.S.A.

Questions or difficulties with the form(s)?

Ask us! Let us know via rgme.surveys@gmail.com.

Due Date

A choice of two dates gives the chance first to gather feedback before Episode 17 on 21 September 2024, and then to allow responses from that Episode.

First and Second Rounds

Florence, Italy, Ponte Vecchio from Ponte alle Grazie. Photo: Ingo Mehling, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Please aim to complete the Survey by Wednesday, 18 September 2024 at midnight EDT (GMT-4), when its First Round will close.
A chance to complete the Survey in a Second Round will remain open until Sunday, 23 September 2024 at midnight EDT, to give scope to offer feedback after our reflective and celebratory Episode 17.

Thanks

We are grateful for your time and input, and we thank you for your suggestions.

Our Survey Series

New York, Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.769, fol. 305v (Weltchronik or World Chronicle, Regensburg, Germany, 1360). Image © Morgan Library, New York, via https://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/215/143938

This Survey compliments, and advances from, the Surveys respectively for our Editorial Committee and Participants designed by our Associate Jessica L. Savage in 2022.

A report by our Editorial Team about the 2022 RGME Surveys appears in Issue 2 of our eNewsletter ShelfMarks.

ShelfMarks, Issue 2 (Volume 2 Number 1 for Winter 2022-2023)

We warmly thank Jessica for her generous contributions to our mission and planning for activities. They are manifested, for example, in those Surveys, which inspired our 2024 Anniversary Survey designed by our Editorial Team this year, including both our

Intern Executive Assistant/Associate Hannah Goeselt
and
Intern Executive Assistant Zoey Kambour.

Hannah and Zoey joined these positions in 2024, as part of:

our 2024 Project “Between Past and Future” and
our co-sponsored Workshop on “Medieval Women’s Networks”.

We give thanks for the advice for the 2024 Survey from the RGME Editorial Committee and other Advisors.

We look forward to learning your responses to our 2024 Anniversary Survey.

Questions? Suggestions?

Please leave your comments or questions below
Contact Us
Send a note to director@manuscriptevidence.org or RGMEevents@gmail.com

Visit our Social Media:

our FaceBook Page
our Facebook Group
our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
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Join the Friends of the RGME. Send your favorite recipe for Lemonade (and perhaps its Story) for our Competition.

Iron bridge over the Sava river at Radeče (IG. GRIDL fabrik, 1894). Photograph Petar Milošević (29 September 2020), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Tags: 2024 Anniversary Survey, Bridges, Friends of the Reaearch Group on Manuscript Evidence, RGME Anniversary, Survey, The Research Group Speaks
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Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge: An RGME Session for IMC 2025

August 13, 2024 in Announcements, Call for Papers, Conference, Events, International Medieval Congress, Leeds, Manuscript Studies

Call for Papers
“Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge:
A Global Perspective on
How Manuscripts Conserve and Transmit Ludic Knowledge”

Session
Sponsored by the RGME
IMC Leeds 2025

Organised by Michael A. Conrad
(University of Sankt-Gallen)

[Posted on 13 August 2024]

Following the success of our Inaugural Session at the International Medieval Congress this year, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence announces its proposed Sessions for the International Medieval Congress to be held at the University of Leeds from 1–10 July 2025.

Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Projet pour le Pont Neuf, circa 1577. Image via Wikimedia via Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

Background: 2024

Our 2024 Inaugural Session, co-organised by our Associates Ann Pascoe-van Zyl and Michael Allman Conrad, focused on “Building Bridges ‘Over Troubled Waters'”:

2024 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: 2024

Foreground: 2025

Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, MS 23 E 25, p. 73, top. Image via https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Dublin,_Royal_Irish_Academy,_MS_23_E_25 via Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

For 2025,with the IMC’s Thematic focus of “Worlds of Learning”, the RGME proposes an integrated suite of events comprising a pair of Sessions of papers plus a Roundtable discussion on “Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning”.

2025 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: Call for Papers (Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning)

In addition, following up on a strand in our 2024 Inaugural Session, the RGME also proposes a sponsored session organised by that session’s co-organizer and presenter, Michael Allman Conrad.

The Plan for the Session

“Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge:
A Global Perspective on
How Manuscripts Conserve and Transmit
Ludic Knowledge”

Recent scholarship has pointed out time and again how much in the Middle Ages games and other joyful pastimes were not only cherished and accepted as an essential part of everyday life, but also well appreciated as educational tools for making difficult lessons more palatable for students.

Some of these educational games have a long tradition, such as rithmomachia, which was used in schools for instruction in the quadrivial arts and still known by scholars of the 17th century. Some disciplines, such as astronomy, even had their own games — in this case, for example, the ludus astrologicus. The knowledge of such elaborate games was transmitted through manuscripts, often as part of miscellanies. Besides, there is no lack of writings dedicated to more profane games either. In fact, there are collections of board games (and other pastimes), with some of these manuscripts showing very rich and ornate embellishments and game diagrams, along with vivid miniatures depicting players in action.

Madrid, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial, MS T-I-6, folio 27 verso. Image in the Public Domain, Via Wikipedia Commons.

Examples of such works include

the Book of Games (Libro de acedrez dados e tablas c. 1284) by Alfonso X of Castile, in the Bonus Socius group (13th century?),
the Paris manuscript of Le jeu de echecs by Nicola de S. Nicholai (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF), MS fr. 1173, 14th century),
as well as lesser-known manuscripts, such as Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O 2.45 (after 1248 AD).

The book medium, however, poses serious challenges to scribes concerned with conserving and conveying knowledge related to games and other pastimes, as their existence is ephemeral and their experience difficult to verbalize — which is a reason why in the (Arabic and European) tradition medieval books on games usually came with said pictures and diagrams, with the intent to compensate for what cannot be easily expressed through words alone. What is more, in medieval writings on games their epistemological status often remains ambivalent and uncertain, as they were often touted as morally ambiguous and did not fit existing knowledge systems. That said, there nonetheless were some scholars that tried to fit ludic knowledge into prevalent eschatological framework of knowledge, such as Hugh of Saint-Victor, with some of them basing their (re-)assessments of the morality and epistemic status of games and other forms of entertainment on Arabic and Greek influences. As reaffirmed by Hugh and in the work of Thomas Aquinas, the Latin concept of ludus could not only serve as an umbrella term for various kinds of games, but all forms of entertainment.

While the focus of the proposed Session is games, the evocation of ludic knowledge is intended as an invitation to different kinds of pastimes in order jointly to examine how medieval scholars dealt with game-related forms of knowledge, from material objects to their metaphysical and anthropological relevance. Especially the latter implies and extends the perspective towards practices employing games and other pastimes methodologically for educational purposes. Consequently, the geographical scope is not restricted to the European sphere. On the contrary, since there is strong evidence that European game manuscripts drew much from Arabic and other non-Latin traditions, contributors focusing on the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic world, India, or other cultural world regions are very much welcome and encouraged to partake.

Some possible questions could be (but are not limited to):

What do we know about the authorship of game manuscripts?
Are the works written by single individuals or collectives?
In what types of miscellanies do writings on games and game manuals appear and why?
How do manuscripts/authors deal with ephemeral aspects of games and other pastimes that are difficult to be expressed linguistically?
How can we reconstruct the concrete educational practices wherein games and other pastimes were used?
What hints thereof can we find in the material evidence of manuscripts?
How do authors try to systematize ludic knowledge and where do they position it within given epistemic frameworks?
What can we say about the relationship between game diagrams and diagrammatic representations in scientific disciplines in terms of a shared visual vocabulary?

Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.2.45, fols 2v-3r. Image copyright the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, via CC-NY 4.0.

Note on the Image

Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O 2.45 (after 1248 AD), folios 2v and 3r. Accompanying the text, diagrams and illustrations depict two chess boards, an alquerque, a nine-mens-morris and a daldøsa game board. The first moves of the game are already played.

Proposals

For information about submitting your proposals for our Sessions, please see the CFP for our companion suite for IMC 2025:

2025 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: Call for Papers (Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning)

Deadlines for Proposals

5 September 2024 for your individual paper proposals for our RGME Sessions and Round-table Discussion
30 September 2024 for the RGME to complete and submit its programmes.

To prepare your proposals, see the IMC instructions

How to Submit a Proposal

Send your proposals for our Session to us at

rgme.imc.sessions@gmail.com by 5 September 2024

When your proposals are accepted, we will direct you to submit them through the

IMC-Leeds Confex Submission Portal

Spread the Word

Look for our RGME CFPs on the IMC 2025 website:

IMC 2025 Padlet Page

Questions and Suggestions?

If you wish, please:

add your Comments here,
send us a message (Contact Us),
visit our Facebook Page and Facebook Group,
join the Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (there is no charge), and
register for our events on our RGME Eventbrite Portal:
RGME Eventbrite Collection

*****

Tags: Alfonso X of Castile, Board Games, Book of Games, Chess, Games in the Middle Ages, History of Board Games, Jeu des echecs, Le jeu de echecs, Ludus astrologicus, Manuscript studies, Quadrivia, Rhythmomachy
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Patrick Wormald (1947–2007): A Memoir by David Ganz

August 12, 2024 in Announcements, Bembino, Manuscript Studies, Memoirs, Research Group Episodes for The Research Group Speaks, Research Group Speaks (The Series)

Patrick Wormald (1947–2007):
A Memoir by David Ganz

2024 RGME Anniversary Recollections
Part 2

[Posted on 12 August 2024]

Patrick Wormald at one of Wendy Davies’s charter weekends of the Bucknell group at Bucknell, Shropshire, in the late 1980s. Photograph by Rosemary Morris.

Our series of 2024 Anniversary Reflections continues its tributes for people who have contributed to our formation, progress, and the mission over the years.

Part 1 focused on Giles Constable (1929—2021), RGME Honorary Trustee, Colleague, Friend, and Mentor.

Recollections for the 2024 RGME Anniversary, Part 1: Giles Constable

Part 2 turns to our long-term Associate Patrick Wormald (1947–2007), Angl0-Saxon Legal Historian, with a Memoir by our Trustee David Ganz. We offer it as a booklet freely for download.

Anniversary Reflections

In 2024, with our year’s theme of Bridges, the RGME celebrates:

25 years as a nonprofit educational organization incorporated in Princeton, New Jersey, and
35 years as an international scholarly organization founded as part of a major research project on “Anglo-Saxon and Related Manuscripts” at The Parker Library of Corpus Christi College in the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Among the ways to mark our anniversary, the RGME continues with its series of Memoirs (including these Parts 1 and 2 in 2024) and prepares an Episode in our online series “The Research Group Speaks” to consider

Episode 17. “RGME Retrospect and Prospects: Anniversary Reflections”

To register:

Episode 17. Retrospect and Prospects: Anniversary Reflections
Saturday 21 September 2024, 1:00–2:30 EDT (GMT-4) online via Zoom

The Episode aims to include recollections of people who have gone before us, and whose memory we wish to honor with informal conversation and a roundtable.

Memoir of Patrick Wormald
Angl0-Saxon Legal Historian

In preparation for the Episode in September 2024, David Ganz has offered this Memoir.

“The Schartz–Metterhulme Method:
A Memoir of Patrick Wormald (1947–2007)”
by David Ganz

David began its composition years ago, following the Memorial Service for Patrick in Oxford. He returned to it recently for us in preparing for our Episode 17. Additions for the publication include

photographs of Patrick, generously provided by Rosemary Morris;
David’s description of Patrick’s attention to and use of manuscript evidence and contributions to some RGME events;
bibliographical references; and
an Afterword by Mildred Budny.

The title takes its name from a short story with that name by Saki, the pen name of Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916). First published in 1911, “The Schartz—Metterklume Method” appeared in the volume of Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914).

In conjuring up the world and horizons of historians at Oxford in an earlier generation when Patrick Wormald embarked upon his studies, giving shape to their pursuit across a lifetime at the University of Oxford and elsewhere, the Memoir by David Ganz offers perspectives from a near-contemporary of that life’s work, which continued to engage with various of those historians and their antecedents, not least Frederic William Maitland (1850–1906). The Memoir signals Patrick’s attention repeatedly to the evidence of manuscripts, as part of his research, teaching, and publications. Some of his publications long-planned found fruition posthumously after Patrick’s death too soon at the age of fifty-seven.

We publish this Memoir as an RGME Publication, following the principles of our Style Manifesto, set in our digital font Bembino, and freely available for circulation. (For information about download or printed copies, see below.)

Patrick Wormald on a charter weekend at Bucknell, Shropshire, in the late 1980s. Photograph by Rosemary Morris.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: All Soul's College, Anglo-Saxon legal history, Christ Church University of Oxford, David Ganz, Elizabeth A.R. Brown, Frederic William Maitland, Memoirs, Oxford Historians, Patrick Wormald, Peggy Brown, RGME Anniversary, RGME Colloquia, RGME Seminars on the Evidence of Manuscripts, University of Glasgow, University of Oxford
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NOW OLD:
Plans have changed.
See
2025 RGME Autumn Colloqium on Fragments

2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium
at the University of Waterloo

“Break-Up Books
and Make-Up Books:
Encountering and Reconstructing
the Legacy of Otto F. Ege
and Other Biblioclasts“

Friday to Sunday 21–23 November 2025
in Hybrid Format (pending funding)
or Online by Zoom

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for information and updates

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RGME Spring & Autumn Symposia

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in the Shaping
or Re-Shaping of Books

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32nd Annual IMC
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“Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge:
A Global Perspective on
How Manuscripts Conserve and Transmit Ludic Knowledge”

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Sponsored by the RGME
IMC Leeds 2025

Organised by Michael A. Conrad
(University of Sankt-Gallen)

“Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge:
A Global Perspective on
How Manuscripts Conserve and Transmit
Ludic Knowledge”

Patrick Wormald (1947–2007):
A Memoir by David Ganz

2024 RGME Anniversary Recollections
Part 2

Memoir of Patrick Wormald
Angl0-Saxon Legal Historian

“The Schartz–Metterhulme Method:
A Memoir of Patrick Wormald (1947–2007)”
by David Ganz