Delibovi on Glassgold on Boethius: A Blogpost

March 5, 2025 in Guest Blogposts, Manuscript Studies, Translations

The Manuscript
as
Creative Undercurrent:

Reflections on the Reissue of
Glassgold’s “Englishings” of Poems by Boethius

Dana Delibovi

[Posted on 18 March 2025]

Editor’s Note
We welcome Dana Delibovi as Guest Blogger. We thank her for sharing her explorations on a subject dear to our hearts.

Imprisoned and awaiting execution, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480 – 524) wrote On the Consolation of Philosophy, a work of Latin prose often translated into prose and poetry. The original manuscript has not survived, but later manuscripts of the text have, including some important English translations.

These English manuscripts are a creative undercurrent to a volume reissued in the autumn of 2024, Boethius: Poems From On the Consolation of Philosophy, with the subtitle, “Translated Out of the Original Latin into Diverse Historical Englishings, Diligently Collaged” by Peter Glassgold.[1] Manuscripts — objects with a physical as well as a verbal aesthetic — indirectly lend pictorial, methodological, and ekphrastic inspiration to Glassgold’s work. Inspiration like this, I believe, may have implications for current appreciation of historical manuscripts.

Riffing on the English translators

In the introduction and afterword to his book, Glassgold mentions his debt to three important English translators of On the Consolation of Philosophy, whose “word-work” Glassgold explored to create “sound-collages” that chime with English in its many historical incarnations.[2] These translators, working in Old, Middle, and Early Modern English respectively, are:

King Alfred (848–899, ruled 871–899),
Geoffrey Chaucer (died 1400), and
Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603, ruled 1558–1603).

I recently interviewed Glassgold for the e-zine Cable Street, where he stated that, in any single line of the poetry, he “ranged through the whole known vocabulary of English, from Old to Modern. The making of [these] Boethius translations was not so much a process as an attitude ― improvisational, you might even say jazzy.”[3]

An example from a poem in Book I of Boethius’ work shows how Glassgold invents translations across the evolution of the spoken and written language, melding Old, Middle and Modern English.[4]

Now he lies of mindz light weakened
and nekke pressid by overheuy chaines,
his chere holding downcast for the weighte,
cumpeld, eala! to scan the dreary earth.

The avant-garde poet and literary scholar Charles Bernstein, writing in the book’s foreword, calls Glassgold’s approach “pataquerical” — spontaneous, playful, sometimes irascible, and imagined across multiple iterations of language. “The historical progression of English translations offers Glassgold stratified layers of linguistic sediment that he entangles in his palimpsestic composition.”[5.]

Part of the “linguistic sediment” of Boethius in English are manuscripts — including manuscripts of Alfred the Great, Chaucer, and Elizabeth I that survive today in some form (Figures 1–3; see below). One of these is a profoundly fire-damaged manuscript of the “Alfredian” Old English Boethius (Figure 1). This work was either translated by King Alfred the Great or anonymous translators assisting with the king’s efforts to revive learning.[6] Other manuscripts of note are a 1380 transcription by Adam Scrivener of the Middle English translation by Chaucer (Figure 2)[7] and the translation into early Modern English by Queen Elizabeth I (Figure 3).[8]

Undercurrents—
Pictorial, Methodological, and Ekphrastic

I believe that such English manuscripts of Boethius represent three creative undercurrents to Glassgold’s work. Two are fairly obvious. One is speculative.

1. Pictorial Inspiration

The first and probably most obvious is pictorial inspiration from manuscripts. The cover of Glassgold’s book, created by Andrew Bourne, uses typography bearing a family resemblance to the handwriting of manuscripts. Bourne creates the illusion of cut-up strips of handwriting to covey the collaging of manuscript text (Figure 4). This thoughtful cover design made Literary Hub’s list of The 167 Best Book Covers of 2024.

2. Methodological Inspiration

The second fairly obvious inspiration is methodological. As Glassgold describes his work process:

I was surrounded by books, De Consolatione and the various Consolations I’d gathered, set propped up on stands in chronological order from left to right, along with piles of dictionaries in, behind, and around them. I wrote slowly, by hand—as I always do my first drafts, though it felt especially appropriate in these circumstances.[9]

In creating his book, Glassgold worked with published, typeset versions of the translations of Alfred, Chaucer, Elizabeth, and other English translators. But writing his work by hand felt more appropriate than usual. This feeling might arise from the known existence of manuscripts — the emotional connection to handwritten physical objects.

The manuscript is not merely a vehicle for thought in the manner of mass-produced text, especially digital text. The manuscript has a material structure connected to the natural world through its parchments, papyri, chalks, and inks, as has been noted by Ittai Weinryb.[10] To write physically, in longhand, is to engage in a mimesis of the manuscript process, infinitely satisfying and emotionally resonant. In addition, Glassgold’s project of “collaging” other translations to make his own channels the painstaking work of manuscript creation, which involves copying, cutting, patching, and erasure.

3. Ekphrasis

The third creative undercurrent is ekphrasis — writing that describes or works of the plastic arts. This undercurrent is speculative — a concept I am exploring, rather than asserting. I believe that Glassgold’s finished work can be considered ekphrastic, manuscripts in their substance as works of bookbinding, illustration, calligraphy, and, in the case of Elizabeth’s text of Boethius’s poetry, a flamboyant personal hand. I believe this to be true even though Glassgold used typeset source materials and the publisher set the book using modern technologies.

My thesis stems from the shared idea of Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), and Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) that translation is the “afterlife” or “reincarnation” of prose or poetry.[11] Benjamin wrote that, in translations, “the life of the originals attains . . . its ever-renewed and most abundant flowering.” He thought the “afterlife” of literature was “a transformation and a renewal of something living” into a new, still living work.[12]

The literary ‘life’ of Boethius’s work includes an array of aesthetic, visual and tactile objects — manuscripts. The life of Glassgold’s work must encompass and take ekphrastic inspiration from those visual and tactile works.

Ekphrasis in such a case shines through the work in tonality and energy. For example, Elizabeth’s muscular handwritten lines from the start of Poem XII, Book III, slant powerfully upward at an increasing angle as she moves down the page; Glassgold’s translations of the same lines pick up steam as they go. Elizabeth and Glassgold both end this section with a akin to Anglo-Saxon prosody: “the hilly house went to” and “wente to the hous of helle.”[13] The physical work of art, the manuscript, reiterates the boldness of the text, and subliminally transmits the spark of the manuscript.

Looking Ahead

I am in the process of developing arguments against my thesis. No doubt, readers of this post will develop many more. But regardless of these particular arguments’ merits, I believe there is merit in approaching manuscripts — in all their robust materiality — as integral to the continued life of older texts. Surely, the power of a physical work we can see, hold, and even smell must push its way into later print and digital incarnations. Appreciating this may hold a key to rescuing literature from the current flimsiness of mass-market paperbacks and e-books.

*****

Illustrations

Figure 1

King Alfred’s Boethius

The burned 10^th-century manuscript of the old English translation of Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy, attributed to Alfred the Great (849–899). The fire that burned the manuscript occurred in 1731.

Photo from British Library Collection Care website: Cotton MS Otho A. VI., folio 32r, top:
Collection Care Fired Up for BBC Fourth Appearance (= https://blogs.bl.uk/collectioncare/2013/08/collection-care-fired-up-for-bbc-four-appearance.html); Accessed January 4, 2025.

Figure 2

Chaucer’s Boethius

A portion of folio 2v of the translation by Chaucer (c. 1340–1400) of On the Consolation of Philosophy into Middle English. The first segment shown is “The ferthe Metur” (fourth poem) of Book I.

In the first three lines, Chaucer writes:

“Who so it be þat is clere of vertue sad and wel ordinat of lyuyng. þat haþ put vnderfote þe prowed[e] wierdes and lokiþ vpryȝt vpon eyþer fortune.”

Glassgold renders this as:

Who serene in settled life
haþ put proud fate underfote
and rihtwis eyeing eyþer fortune.

The folios also contain marks, such as line breaks, by later hands.

Aberystwyth, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru – The National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 393D, De consolatione Philosophiae, folio 2v, bottom; c. 1380. Image via Public Domain Mark from the online database for The National Library of Wales; Accessed February 17, 2025.

Text clarification by type from Project Gutenberg: Gutenberg.org; Accessed January 4, 2025.

Figure 3

Queen Elizabeth I’s Boethius

A section of On the Consolation of Philosophy, Poem XII, Book III, translated and in the handwriting of Elizabeth I (1533–1603). It is believed that Elizabeth translated and hand-wrote the poems from the work, but dictated the prose to her secretary.

London, Public Record Office, MS SP 12/289 folio 48r. Image from the British National Archives, October and November 1593 (SP 12/289 folio 48), via https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/elizabeth-monarchy/elizabeths-translation-of-the-consolation-of-philosophy/; Accessed January 4, 2025.

Figure 4

Peter Glassgold’s Boethius

Cover detail, showing motifs of handwriting and collage of text strips, for Peter Glassgold’s book. Designed by Andrew Bourne, 2024, World Poetry Books.

Notes

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[1] Boethius, Boethius: Poems From On the Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Peter Glassgold (New York: World Poetry Books, 2024), 136, 138.

[2] Boethius/Glassgold, 136, 138.

[3] Dana Delibovi, “The Deep Humanity of Boethius: An Interview with Peter Glassgold, creator of collaged “Englishings” of the poems from Boethius’ On the Consolation of Philosophy,” Cable Street 2, no. 7 (2024).

[4] Boethius/Glassgold, 9.

[5] Boethius/Glassgold, xi.

[6] As Mildred Budny has noted in a personal communication.

[7] “Adam Scrivener” as been identified by L.R. Mooney as the scribe Adam Pinkhurst, although other scholars have dissented. See:

Linne R Mooney, “Chaucer’s Scribe.” Speculum 81, no. 1 (2006): 97–138 (= https://www.jstor.org/stable/20463608); and

Jane Roberts, “On Giving Scribe B a Name and a Clutch of London Manuscripts From c. 1400.” Medium Ævum 80, no. 2 (2011): 247–70 (= https://www.jstor.org/stable/43632873).

[8] Benkert, Lysbeth. “Translation as Image-Making: Elizabeth I’s Translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy.” Early Modern Literary Studies 6.3 (January, 2001): 2.1–20, via http://purl.oclc.org/emls/06-3/benkboet.htm.

Queen Elizabeth’s Englishings of Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, A.D. 1593; Plutarch, De Curiositate, Horace, De Arte Poetica (part), A.D. 1598, edited from the unique MS, partly in the Queen’s Hand, in the Public Record Office, London, by Miss Caroline Pemberton. Early English Text Society, Original Series, 113 (London, 1899), via https://ia800504.us.archive.org/9/items/queenelizabethse00eliz/queenelizabethse00eliz.pdf.

Also The Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I: The Queen’s Translation of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae. Public Record Office Manuscript SP 12/289, ed. Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr., and Philip Edward Phillips. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Volume 366 (Tempe, Arizona, 2009).

[9] Boethius/Glassgold, 138.

[10] Ittai Weinryb, “Living Matter: Materiality, Maker, and Ornament in the Middle Ages,” Gesta 52, no. 2 (2013): 128 (= https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/672086).

[11] Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2019), 11; Also “Walter Benjamin as Translator” (= https://www.konstfack.se/PageFiles/46686/Walter%20Benjamin%20-%20The%20task%20of%20the%20Translator.pdf).

Jacques Derrida, “What Is a Relevant Translation?” trans. Lawrence Venuti, Critical Inquiry 27, Winter (2001), 199–200 (= https://trad1y2ffyl.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/venuti31.pdf).

Subhas Dasgupta, “Tagore’s Concept of Translation: A Critical Study,” Indian Literature 56, no. 3 (2012), 139–140 (= https://www.jstor.org/stable/23345972).

[12] Benjamin/Arendt, 14–15.

[13] The National Archives, “Elizabeth’s Translation of The Consolation of Philosophy” (= https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/elizabeth-monarchy/elizabeths-translation-of-the-consolation-of-philosophy/); Boethius/Glassgold, 87.

*****

Tags: Adam Scrivener, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, British Library Cotton MS Otho A.vi, Consolation of Philosophy, Early Modern English, Ekphrasis, Englishing, Geoffrey Chaucer, King Alfred, King Alfred's Boethius, London Public Record Offfice MS SP 12/289, Manuscript studies, Methodological Inspiration, Middle English, National Library of Wales Peniarth MS 393D, Old English, Peter Glassgold, Pictorial Inspiration, Queen Elizabeth I, Undercurrents
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2024 Landmarks

March 3, 2025 in 2024 Grant, Anniversary, Events, Manuscript Studies, RGME Recollections, RGME Symposia, Student Friends of Princeton University Library, Visits to Collections, Workshops on "The Evidence of Manuscripts"

Landmarks

Achievements for the RGME Anniversary Year

Reflections on the Year’s RGME Visits
(In Person, Virtual, and Hybrid)
to Special Collections

2024 Spring and Autumn Symposia
2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College
2024 Autumn Symposium “At The Helm”
RGME Visit to the Collection of Steven M. Lomazow: Report

[Posted on 2 March 2025]

Private Collection, Photograph of Bridges in Paris, 1850s (enhanced). Image courtesy of David W. Sorenson.

Reflecting upon the many achievements of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence in its 2024 Anniversary Year, we celebrate the Landmarks in the journey, as well as the individual and collective steps of its full course.

For the Anniversary Year, our Theme was “Bridges”. Our funded Project for a major part of its accomplishments was “Between Past and Future”. See:

2024 Grant for “Between Past and Future” Project from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Research Libraries Program

With the completion of the year’s work for 2024, we observe that it brought many developments for the RGME, as we responded to the momentum of the events as they unfolded. Learning from them and gathering their momentum with follow-up events, we discovered that it was possible to create fresh approaches, returning participation, and new collaborations.

Let us focus on one of those sets of landmarks, to show how both the planned activities and their unexpected expansions could produce a remarkable series of visits to Special Collections of various kinds, whether in person, online, or both in hybrid format.

RGME Visits to Special Collections in 2024

The story unfolded in a series of steps, leading to specific events.

Spring and Autumn Symposium as a Pair,
with Follow-Up

Poster 2: Program for 2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar.

They centered upon the pair of 2024 Spring and Autumn Symposia, designed for the Project as an invited, hybrid, 3-day event in the Spring at Vassar College, and an online 1-day event in the Autumn as its follow-up.

The Spring Symposium took place as planned, while a few updates in the program adapted to circumstances, such as when a few speakers as short notice had to change travel plans and present in online format rather than in person. Our dedication to a hybrid format for the event maintained our commitment to our wider audience from the need to create online events in recent years, while we waited for the return of in-person events.

Spring Symposium “Between Past and Future”
April (hybrid)

That opportunity came in 2024, with the invitation to hold our Spring Symposium at Vassar College in April. The focus of the Symposium is manifested in its title,

“Between Past and Future:
Building Bridges between Special Collections
and Teaching for the Liberal Arts”.

Speakers from Vassar and other centers in the United States and the United Kingdom reported projects and initiatives for Special Collections dedicated to teaching with original sources in manuscript and other forms.

Our subjects were primarily medieval and early modern, in keeping with the new catalogue of such materials and the special exhibition on “Books of the Middle Ages & Renaissance” at the college. Thus collectively, with the Spring Symposium, were celebrated the acquisition of the Nicholas B. Scheetz Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.

Autumn Symposium “At The Helm”
October (online)

Enthusiasm for the Spring Symposium led, by participants’ requests, to extend the Autumn Symposium to 2 days instead. This symposium featured a set of curated virtual visits to Special Collections, both private and public.

Poster 2 for RGME 2024 Autumn Symposium. Set in RGME Bembino. Image: Coventry Patmore, Amelia: An iIyll (1878), title page, illuminated by Bertha Patmore. Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Musuems and Press.

Expanding the time-frame of the Spring Symposium, the Autumn Symposium considered materials from antiquity to the present day, medieval and early modern still included. The materials under consideration included manuscripts, printed books, and coins.

The virtual visits examined highlights of collections at Vassar College (both Special Collections and the Art Center) and the Universities of Delaware, Missouri, Rochester, and Waterloo, as well as private collections. Manuscripts showcased in the presentations included examples not only from them, but also, for example, from the Biblioteca Capitolare in Vercelli, Princeton University, and the RGME’s own Library & Archives.

Collectors speaking about their collections and the inspiration for them included our RGME Associates, Mark Samuels Lasner, Beppy Owen, and Reid Byers, who previewed his exhibition on “Imaginary Books” about to open at The Grolier Club. Its catalogue, we note with delight, is set in our own RGME Bembino (like our website), Reid’s choice for its font.

The enthusiasm for that event was remarkable. It had vivid presentations and discussions about them by curators, teachers, students (undergraduate and graduate), independent scholars, and others. We can sum up the atmosphere with the words of one presider, Librarian at the University of Missouri, that the Symposium celebrated, and brought home and alive, “the joy of education”.

This momentum called for its own follow-up. Accordingly, we turned to an invitation (since January) to visit a private collection. The nature of our year’s Project encouraged us to prepare the visit, if possible, before the end of our Anniversary Year.

In-Person/Online Visit
November (hybrid)

In November, the RGME visited the Collection of Dr. Steven M. Lomazow both in person and online. The scope of the collection and our visit to it, with thanks to the generosity of Dr. Lomazow and his wife Suze Bienaimee, are described in our announcement and report:

This visit in hybrid format represents a significant landmark for the RGME. With it, we return to our tradition of In-Person Visits to collections, such as Firestone Library and the Princeton University Art Museum for our 2019 Spring Symposium “The Roads Taken”.

Poster 1 2024 Autumn Symposium

With the invited 2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College, we have returned to In-Person Events, after having developed our multiple forms of Online Events in response to the Covid-19 Pandemic beginning in 2020.

The online 2024 Autumn Symposium “At the Helm” followed up the wonderfully successful Spring Symposium and carried forward its momentum by a set of curated virtual visits to Special Collections of various kinds, extending its range and covering many periods.

With the invited Visit to the Lomazow Collection, as a further follow-up for the curated visits of the 2024 Autumn Symposium “At the Helm”, we bring to the table the tradition of our online commitment to our wider audience.

Also, with this event came a new collaboration with the Student Friends of the Princeton University Library (SFPUL). We hope that it may continue into the future.

Culmination and Achievements

In certain ways, this hybrid visit in November represents a culmination for our 2024 Year of visits and virtual visits to see original materials attesting to the transmission of the written word across time and place. The inspiration and accomplishment of these goals formed the centerpiece for our 2024 Project “Between Past and Future”, designed to focus upon the strengths of Special Collections of many kinds for teaching and research in the Liberal Arts and other realms.

We give thanks to all our hosts, sponsors, contributors, participants, and audience for such instructive, illuminating, and enjoyable experiences.

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, as seen from Battery East. Photograph © Frank Schulenburg / CC BY-SA 4.0 via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Golden_Gate_Bridge_as_seen_from_Battery_East.jpg

Tags: 2024 Anniversary Year, 2024 Autumn Symposium, 2024 Project "Between Past and Future", 2024 Spring Symposium, Collection of Steven M. Lomazow, Vassar College, Visits to Special Collections
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Starters’ Orders

February 25, 2025 in Announcements, Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evience, Manuscript Studies, RGME Competition, RGME Friends' Meetings, RGME Recipes

“Starters’ Orders”
Competition for Favorite Recipes

Appetizers, Hors d’Oeuvres,
Canapés, and Starters

Round 2
of the Competition
for the Favorite Recipes of the Friends
of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Logo (2024) of the Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

[Posted on 25 February 2025, with updates]

Following the completion of Round 1 and the awards of its Prizes and the creation of its Award Certificates for the Prize Winners, we turn to Round 2.

For Round 1 and its Entries, see:

After exploring recipes for Lemonade, Etc., and awarding prizes for the winning entries in our Friends Meeting 3 (27 January 2025), we sought suggestions for the subject of Round 2 in our Competition for Favorite Recipes (and stories about them) for the RGME Friends Favorite Recipes Cookbook.

Prizes for the Favorite Recipes for “Lemonade, Etc.” Wrapped and ready to send. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Our Favorite Recipe Competition now turns to Round 2. The theme for this round was chosen at our Fifth Meeting (23 February 2025). We wondered: Shall we move from drinks such as lemonade to hors d’oeuvres, entrées, soups, salads, etc., or go straight to desserts? At once came the collective answer: “Starters!”

Starters’ Orders

So we order Starters for our next Round of Recipes.

For this round, we consider Appetizers, Hors D’Oeuvres, Canapes, Finger Food, and Starters of many kinds.

Whatever they are called, this multi-form and multi-purpose variety of foodstuffs is designed to perk the appetite (as “amuse-bouches” or the like), serve as bite-size morsels of deliciousness, stave off hunger in place of a meal when time or opportunity constrains, start a round of courses for a full meal, or stand in between courses as a sort of intermission within an elaborate meal.

Their creation can draw upon a wide range of ingredients and culinary traditions, along with time-tested recipes perhaps handed down in the family. They might also take inspiration from improvisations drawing together what is on hand in the pantry, in the fridge, on the shelves, in the garden or orchard, in the market, or in the shop. They might comprise single ingredients or types of ingredients — such as a handful of nuts, a selection of olives, a piece or pieces of cheese, a nibbling of crudités — or combinations of flavors, textures, and tastes, such as with sauces or dips for fruits and vegetables, raw or cooked.

They serve many purposes and take multiple forms. For example, one widespread genre, Canapes, might be described as:

“a type of starter, a small, prepared, and often decorative food, consisting of a small piece of bread (sometimes toasted) or cracker, wrapped or topped with some savoury food, held in the fingers and often eaten in one bite.”

————— Canapes

What are some of your favorites, and do you have stories about them? Let us know!

As for this Round on the ride to our RGME Friends’ Favorite Recipes Cookbook, shall we call it “Starters’ Orders”?

“Angels on Horseback”. Photograph by Lana via e Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic lic.

Given the name of this game, might there, among the entries, be room for one or other of these offerings, which involve sticks or skewers?

Prizes and Incentives

As with Round 1, prizes (provided by a donation) await the winning entries. Please send in your entry, with title, description, and story. Sending more than one entry is allowed, indeed encouraged.

We will review the entries and award prizes at one of our Friends’ Meetings. See their schedule:

Meetings of the Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Also please visit our Eventbrite Registration Portal for information about our events and registration for them.

RGME Eventbrite Collection

A list of customary or popular offerings in this broad category might jog your memory and perk your interest.

Category: Appetizers

*****

From Soup to Nuts

We aim, over time, to gather recipes and stories to fill a cookbook. In this way, we can compare notes and share experiences reflecting the range and breadth of our RGME community. A full-course meal, perhaps, in a veritable Feast.

13-Course Place Setting. Photograph (2019) By Hopefulromntic21 – Own work, via Wikimedia Commons via CC BY-SA 4.0.

*****

Comments, questions, or suggestions?

Send your entries and contact the Friends via

friends.of.rgme@gmail.com

*****

Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, Still Life with Fruits, Nuts, and Cheese (1613) by Floris Claesz van Dyck (1575–1651). By Floris van Dyck – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150586

Note on the Image: Haarlem, Netherlands, Frans Hals Museum, “Still Life with Fruits, Nuts, and Cheese” (1613) by Floris Claesz van Dyck (1575–1651). Credit: By Floris van Dyck – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150586.

*****

Tags: Appetizers, Favorite Recipes, Friends of the Reaearch Group on Manuscript Evidence, Hors d'Oeuvres, Lemonade, Recipe Competition, RGME Cookbook, Starters
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The Weber Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible

February 22, 2025 in Manuscript Studies, Workshops on "The Evidence of Manuscripts"

Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible
in the Collection of Richard Weber

Double columns of 46 lines in Gothic Script
with Decorated Initials, Bar-Extensions,
and Running Titles
Acts 26:14 (est tibi) – Acts 28:9 (insula habe[/-bant] )

Northern France, circa 1330

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto: Top Right. Photograph by Richard Weber.

[Posted on 21 February 2025]

In connection with our new series of RGME Workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.”, our Associate, Richard Weber, revealed another leaf in his collection. This discovery joins the posts about different items in his collection which have been reported in our blog on Manuscript Studies.

Our workshops began by examining a leaf on loan to the RGME with part of the text of the Book of Numbers in a Latin Vulgate Bible in double columns of 46 lines in Gothic script, with decorative elements. See the reports of our discoveries about that leaf:

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

The collaborative work in our workshops, crowdsourcing the quest to identify the leaf, has revealed that it most probably came from the dismembered Saint Albans Bible, produced in Northern France in the 1320s or 1330s and formerly owned by Saint Albans’ Abbey. Our search among online resources, such as blogposts and vendors’ sites, and in printed works, ranging from books and journal articles to catalogues of sales or individual collections, followed up clues leading from one collection or sales room to another.

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

The process of discovery persuaded us, from the resemblances between the leaf in hand and features of some surviving leaves from the Saint Albans Bible, that this leaf very likely came from the same manuscript — if not from another much like it by some of the same scribes and artists. We believe that proof positive (or the like) for this conjectured identification might come were one or both of the leaves which formerly directly preceded and directly followed the leaf to emerge into the light so as to demonstrate an exact match in the flow of text from one to the next.

And so we continue our search among the survivors, as we track the leaves from both the Old and New Testaments in the Saint Albans Bible, especially from the Book of Numbers. In view might be, were time and resources available, the creation of a virtual reconstruction of the manuscript, as has been accomplished or begun for various other manuscripts which now survive in fragments scattered across many locations.

Learning from our workshops that the Farrell Leaf is identifiable most probably as part of the dismembered Saint Albans Bible, our Associate, Richard Weber, reported the presence of another leaf from the same manuscript in his collection. With his permission, for which we give thanks, we introduce it to you and our Workshop Series, starting with RGME Workshop 4: “Manuscript Fragments Compared”.

The Weber Leaf
from the Saint Albans Bible

Acquired on May 23, 2023, from The Raab Collection (Nathan “Nate” Raab and Karen Pearlman Raab), this leaf preserves part of the Acts of the Apostles in the Saint Albans Bible, which was dismembered for resale in 1964. The leaf comes from the last part of the Book of Acts. It breaks off mid-word in its final chapter, about one-third of the way through it.

The Apostle Paul, His Travels, and His Travails

The text on the leaf presents the text from within Chapter 26 to within Chapter 28 of Acts in the Latin Vulgate Version. It opens within verse 14 ([persequeris durum /] est tibi contra) of Chapter 26, completes the chapter, turns to the full span of Chapter 27, and opens the last chapter of the Book up to its verse 9, whereupon it breaks off mid-word (insula habe[/-bant infirmitates]). That is, the span of text encompasses Acts 26:14–32 (the latter portion of the chapter); Acts 27:1–44 (the full chapter); and Acts 28:1–9 (the first third).

The leaf contains most of the extended first-hand account by the Apostle Paul (circa 5 – circa 64/65 AD) of his life’s adventures in his defense before King Herod Agrippa II of Judea (27/28 – 92 or 100 AD). From his own viewpoint, we hear about his transformation from soldier and Roman citizen to apostle in locations stretching from Tarsus in Asia Minor to Jerusalem, Antioch, Thessaloniki, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Malta, and finally Rome.

The scope, range, and variety of his exploits or adventures are illustrated vividly in some medieval manuscript illustrations. Notable among them is the full-page, multi-tiered cycle of scenes rendered by an exceptional master artist in the large-format Carolingian version of the Latin Vulgate Bible prepared at Tours for presentation to the monarch Charles the Bald (823–877). On this imposing Bible, see, for example, Latin 1.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 1, fol. 386v. Image Public Domain via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8455903b/f780.item#.

The Leaf, Its Contents, and Its Presentation

Sections of the text are demarcated by

1) enlarged, decorated initials rendered in polychrome or in ink,
2) ornamental vertical bars extending from the 2-line inset polychrome Chapter Initials to foliate terminals,
3) ornamental or figurative motifs embellishing the enlarged pen-initial in the top line of all but one column,
4) polychrome chapter numerals,
5) polychrome running titles in the upper margins, rendered partly in alternating pigments and partly in pen-line flourishes, and
6) a marginal ‘insertion’ of script to correct an omission in the text.

Let us have a closer look.

The Recto

The recto of the Weber Leaf

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto. Photograph by Richard Weber.

Lively decorated letters rendered in ink rise to considerable heights in the first lines of each column of text, one to each column. In column a, E for Ego opens Verse 15 of Chapter 26. In column b, T completes the opening word UT of Chapter 27:1.

The two-part running title at the top spaces its words at a distance from each other. It keeps the first part (Actus) more-or-less centered above the two columns and places the second, abbreviated word (Ap[osto]lor[um]) offset extending partway into the margin.

The distant, offset half of the running title appears like an afterthought, although apparently as the work of the same scribal artist and during the same campaign of operation (if not at the same sitting). Could it represent a correction to supplement the ‘mistake’ of putting the first component, Actus, on the recto of an opening, rather than on the verso?

On the verso of a two-page opening, with the verso of one leaf facing the recto of the next, customarily a bipartite running title for one set text on both pages might have the first half or portion of a single title on the verso and the continuation in the second half or portion on the recto. What if this leaf received the Actus as if it were a verso, so that its match or completion, Apostolorum, was deemed to need to be fitted in? We wonder what the verso originally facing this leaf had for its running title.

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto: Top Right. Photograph by Richard Weber.

The Verso

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Verso. Photograph by Richard Weber.

This side of the leaf retains the use of a tall ink-drawn letter in the top line, but only for one column. The initial U or V for Valida opening 27:18

The running title keeps to its short form of one word (or syllable) only. Presumably the second part of the title appeared facing it on the recto of the next leaf. We are uncertain what intentions were in place for this enigmatic running title comprising DE (“Of”, “About”), which seems to stand in a suspended state awaiting the completion of a name or phrase on the formerly facing recto. Here is another mystery awaiting resolution, if possible, with the discovery of the next leaf in the sequence in the original book.

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto: Top Center. Photograph by Richard Weber.

The first stem of the animated pen-initial U atop Column a (the left-hand column of the pair on the page) on the verso rises to a backwards and downwards curve containing the shaggy neck and head of a wide-eyed creature with opened jaws with exposed teeth and fangs. One might wonder if the apparent ferocity of the creature emulates or evokes the stormy text of the verse which this initial opens (27:18), as it reads: Valida autem nobis tempestate jactatis sequenti die jactum fecerunt (“And we exceedingly tossed with a tempest, the next day they lightened the ship.”) Might we think of this creature as presenting the Jaws of a Tempest?

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Verso: Top Left. Photograph by Richard Weber.

The Seller’s Description

Richard shares with us the description which accompanied the leaf in preparation for its sale by The Raab Collection in 2023. This description deserves to join the growing group of sellers’, collectors, scholars’, curators’, and others’ descriptions of individual leaves or groups of leaves which are present, for a time, in their hands and before their eyes.

As such they can constitute direct witnesses to surviving portions of the manuscript. Our work toward a collaborative virtual reconstruction of the original will also assemble the descriptions as a contribution toward fuller knowledge of the manuscript and its stages of ownership, study, and wider understanding.

We quote:

The Saint Alban’s Bible started life in Paris in the 1320s or 1330s. Likely, three artists worked together in an atelier, or workshop, to create the high quality product. The workshop to which Christopher de Hamel attributes the creation is that of the famed Parisian artist, Jean Pucelle, one of the most important and influential artists for the Gothic style. While the Saint Alban’s Bible is not in the hand of John Pucelle, it is in the hands of his associates, the Saint Louis Master, whose name has been identifed as Mahiet (Kuroiwa, “Working with Jean Pucelle”). On the margins of another manuscript illustrated by the Saint Louis Master, housed in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, a marginal note from Pucelle to an illuminator, Mahiet, confirms the Saint Louis Master’s identity. Through the association of the Saint Albans Bible with Mahiet and Pucelle, a complex network of Parisian bookmakers opens up, and their works can be traced.

From its manufacture on the Rue de la Parcheminerie, the Bible was likely a gift from Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham to the Abbey of Saint Albans after his 1320-1330s visit to Paris (de Hamel, “Leaf of a Bible Manuscript”). Leaves have ended up in collections such as the Tokyo National Museum of Western Art, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of British Columbia, with others in private hands. The post-medieval lives of manuscripts, as they fragment and change hands, demonstrates their endurance as status symbols and works of art— as a whole and as a part.

The text gives part of Paul’s recount of his life story to King Agrippa who is almost persuaded to become a Christian. The imprisoned Paul’s ship runs aground and he is shipwrecked in Malta on his way to face trial in Rome. The barbarians of Malta show Paul and the shipwrecked crew kindness by building a fire, but a viper emerged from the ashes and bit Paul’s hand, though he did not die.

Provenance: 1. From an incomplete Bible sold at Sotheby’s, 6 July 1964, lot 239, to the dealer and book-breaker Philip C. Duschnes [1897–1970], who dispersed it. Other leaves had already been removed, with some ending up in the collections of E.H. Dring (1864-1928), one reappearing in Bernard Quaritch, cat. 1036, 1984, no. 76).

Then identified in 1981 as from the medieval library of St Albans Abbey, Hertfordshire, and perhaps to be identified as one of ‘duas bonas biblias’ acquired by Abbot Michael de Mentmore (C. de Hamel in Fine Books and Book Collecting, 1981, pp. 10–12).2.

More details:

Leaf from the St Albans Abbey Bible, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment [northern France (Paris), c. 1330] Single leaf, with double columns of 46 lines in a fine gothic bookhand (Acts 26:14–32; Acts 27:1–44; Acts 28:1–9), with hairline penwork ornamenting the V with a grotesque animal head biting the ascender, versal numbers (27, 28) in alternate liquid gold and blue capitals with contrasting penwork, running titles in same, two 2-line initials (one each side of leaf) each in faded pink with white ornamentation on gold background and enclosing foliage, one medieval correction in the margin indicated by a signe-de-renvoi, modern pencil numerations (3, 73), 295 by 200mm or 12 by 8 inches.

*****

Join the Quest

Would you like to join the quest? Do you know of other leaves from the Saint Albans Bible? Do you know of other works by the same scribes or artists? Are you curious about books and ways of looking at them?

Join our Workshops!

*****

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto: Top Right. Photograph by Richard Weber.

Tags: Acts of the Apostles, Book of Numbers, Collection of Jennah Farrell, Collection of Richard Weber, manuscript fragments, Manuscript studies, Medieval Vulgate Bibles, Saint Albans Bible
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Workshop 4. “Manuscript Fragments Compared”

February 16, 2025 in Announcements, Manuscript Studies, Research Group Workshops

RGME Workshops
on
“The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.”
(Formerly: “Examining Original Sources”)

Workshop 4
“Manuscript Fragments Compared”

Sunday 23 February 2025
1:00- 2:30 p.m. EST (GMT-4) by Zoom

We cordially invite you to join us for our next RGME Workshop on the “Evidence of Manuscripts Etc.” The series gives the opportunity collectively to examine original sources, in manuscript and other written forms. Beginners and experts are welcome; we can learn together.

The Series

Originally this series was planned as a two-part series of workshops to consider the medieval “Farell Leaf” on loan to the RGME Library and Archives from the Collection of Jennah Farrell. After rich discussions concerning the fragment and evidence for its production and provenance, most probably as part of the Saint Albans Bible (dismembered in 1964), our workshops have turned into a series for teaching manuscripts and related studies.

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

Workshop 4

Workshop 4 introduces a comparative study. The plentiful genre of medieval Latin Vulgate Bibles is a rich field in Manuscript Studies. Work on cases of deliberately disbursed manuscripts has yielded in the last two decades a selection of stand-out works. Among them is the Saint Albans Bible, known through numerous studies in print and online. Examples include

“Breaking Bad: The Incomplete History of the Saint Albans Bible” (1 Nov 2019)
The Book, The Leaf, The Knife, and Some Bother
The St Albans Bible (20 June 2021)

Since Workshop 3, another leaf from the medium-format Saint Albans Bible has come to our attention. It stands in the collection of our Associate, Richard Weber – from whose collection our blog on Manuscript Studies has reported other discoveries. Its portion from the Acts of the Apostles offers comparison with the Farrell Leaf from the Book of Numbers, with a view toward the presentation of both Old and New Testaments within its former single volume.

Now see:

The Weber Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto: Top Right. Photograph by Richard Weber.

In our workshop, the case of that manuscript is joined by another fragmented Bible, dismembered instead by the biblioclast Otto F. Ege: namely his large-format Ege MS 14, represented by a leaf now on loan to the RGME for teaching purposes. Over the years, our blog has contributed discoveries to knowledge of that manuscript (see Manuscript Studies). For our workshop, Richard Weber reports his leaf from that manuscript as well.

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

Resources for the Quest

The different agents of destruction for these two books provide instructive case studies for the different but overlapping resources available in print and online for the detective work of fragmentology, in the quest to trace the steps of re-distribution of leaves from these Bibles, with a view toward identifying the locations of survivors and virtually reconstructing their original books, insofar as possible.

We welcome participants to join the quest and come forward with questions, updates on any work they have been doing on the Farrell Leaf, or suggestions for potential avenues of study in future workshops.

Registration

Registration is required and free. We are grateful for Voluntary Donations accompanying your Registration to help support our nonprofit educational organization powered principally by volunteers.

Workshop 4. “Manuscript Fragments Compared”: Tickets

Note that our Workshop series now appears on our Eventbrite Registration Portal:

RGME Workshops on “Examining Original Sources”: Tickets: Tickets

If you have issues with the Zoom Link or connecting, please contact

director@manuscriptevidence.org or rgmesocial@gmail.com .

Information about the series

Workshop 5 is planned for Sunday March 2025 at 1:30-2:30 pm EST (GMT-5) by Zoom.

Please join us if your timetable allows. We look forward to welcoming you.

*****

Questions? Suggestions?

Leave your comments or questions below
Contact Us

Visit our Social Media:

our Facebook Page
our Facebook Group
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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.

We look forward to seeing you at our events!

*****

Tags: Collection of Richard Weber, Fragmentology, Jennah Farrell Collection, Latin Vulgate Bibles, Manuscript studies, Medieval manuscripts, Otto Ege MS 14, Otto F. Ege, RGME Workshops on the Evidence of MSS Etc., Saint Albans Bible
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“Thresholds and Communities”

February 8, 2025 in Announcements, Manuscript Studies, Theme of the Year

“Thresholds and Communities”
Our Theme for 2025

[Posted on 5 February 2025, with updates]

Milan, Casa Campanini, Entry Gate. Designed by Alfredo Campanini (1873–1926). Photograph by Giovanni Dall’Orto (26 February 2008), Share Alike 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Giovanni Dall’Orto, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons

For the Year 2025, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence chooses the Theme of “Thresholds and Communities” for exploration as part of its activities and projects.

We began the year’s activities with Episode 19 of our online series wherein “The Research Group Speaks”, in a roundtable discussion introducing the theme and our planned activities. The discussion considered multiple aspects, meanings, and approaches to Thresholds, functioning also as Gateways, Portals, Doors, and Entrances of many kinds.

Episode 19: “At the Gate”

For activities planned for the year, see:

2024 and 2025 Activities

As the year progresses, we will ‘visit’ thresholds of different kinds as we observe their variety. Likewise we will visit communities of various kinds, from the past, present, and perhaps future, as we cultivate the community of the RGME, its participants, audience, friends, and others in the wider world.

Doorways as Grand Entrances

For example, appreciating the photography which showcases the creativity of the design and monumentality of the construction, we might admire the portal to the Casa Campanini, constructed between 1903 and 1906 and designed by the architect Alfredo Campanini (1873–1926). Standing at 11 Via Bellini in Milan, Italy, the main entrance is flanked by a pair of caryatids formed in concrete by the sculptor Michele Vedani (1874–1969). Designed by Campanini and created by Alessandro Mazzucotelli (1865–1938), the wrought iron gate is decorated with graceful floral motifs.

Milan, Casa Campanini, Art Nouveau Style, completed in 1906. Designed by Alfredo Campanini. Image via Dhona, via https://www.facebook.com/groups/Italian.liberty/posts/9132766936775312/.

Thresholds in Literature

We begin with a survey of passages referring to one or more “threshold” in the Bible.

“Threshold” in the Bible
Judges 19:27
1 Kings 14:17
2 Chronicles 3:7 (the threshold of the Temple, lined with gold)
Isaiah 6:4
Ezekiel 46:2 (guards at the threshold of the Temple)
Zephaniah 1:9
1 Samuel 5:4-5 (dismembered parts of the fallen idol Dagon laid at the threshold of the temple of idols)
— Illustrated, for example, in the Morgan Crusader Bible
(New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.361, fol. 21r)
Jeremiah 35:4

Copenhagen, Entrance to Carlsberg Brewery, built 1901.
Image via https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=122224750046226885&id=61556806553551&post_id=61556806553551_122224750046226885&rdid=4h6i5pJiunR2zey7.

Import of a Theme, Place, or Possibility

In addition to physical spaces, “Thresholds” in metaphysical, spiritual, and metaphorical terms are places of transition, which represent beginnings and endings. Navigating them can pose challenges or difficulties. Some of them might not be meant to be traversed, as barriers or points of demarcation. Not always is their passage guaranteed, advisable, or bi-directional. Their presence can be worthy of respect, awe, wonder, admiration, and contemplation.

They offer points of boundary, division, and potential meeting-points for communities.

More to come.

Wells Cathedral, Medieval Door to Undercroft. Wood dated dendochronologically to circa 1265. Image via https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=374843081890636&id=100080948424342&set=a.155695930472020.

Theme and Opportunities

Our events in 2025 on multiple subjects continue to respond to the theme in a myriad of ways. We give thanks to its inspiration and guiding principles.

For example, parts of our 2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium on Fragments invoked the explorations across the thresholds into communities of distinctly different kinds enshrined in the Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri. See:

2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium on Fragments

Florence, Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Domenico di Michelino, Dante Alighieri with Florence and the Realms of the Divine Comedy (Hell, Purgatory, Paradise). Oil on canvas, 1465. Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dante_Domenico_di_Michelino.jpg.

Places and Fields of Studies to Enter

Entrance to Swift Hall and the Department of History at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. Photograph by Mildred Budny (2025).

Pertinacity

Entrances and Communities across time.

Transept and nave of the Abbey Church of Notre-Dame of the Abbey of Jumièges (Seine-Maritime, France). Photograph by Delphine Malassingne (20 September 2014), CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abbatiale_Notre-Dame,_Jumi%C3%A8ges.jpg

Possibilities and Choices

“At the Threshold”. Two cats, footprints, snow, and the story of “The Road Not Taken”. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

We look forward to our next year and its theme. Watch this space!

Now see:

Transformations and Renewals: RGME Theme for 2026.

*****

Tags: "Thresholds and Communities", Casa Campanini, Morgan Crusader Bible, Wells Cathedral
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Episode 21. “Learning How to Look”

January 18, 2025 in Announcements, Manuscript Studies, Research Group Speaks (The Series)

“The Research Group Speaks”
Episode 21

“Learning How to Look”
A Roundtable

Saturday 24 May 2025
1:00–2:30 pm EST (GMT-5) by Zoom

[Posted on 17 January 2025]

As the series wherein “The Research Group Speaks,” we respond to suggestions and requests as the series unfolds. For information about the series, please see:

“The Research Group Speaks”: The Series

London, British Library, Yates Thompson MS 5, fol. 12r. Book of Hours, 15th century, France, perhaps Tours. Saint Matthew, Evangelist, with book, spectacles, and lion attribute. Image via https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2019/02/medieval-spectacles.html

The Plan

For this Episode, by request, a group of experts, scholars, students, and interested observers will compare notes and share experiences. We examine the painstaking yet rewarding quest to learn how to look at objects or materials.

Cases in point will come from the detailed study of manuscripts and printed books, photographs, human anatomy, numismatics, prints and drawings, textual transmission, the natural world, and other spheres. From personal experience, our speakers may report on how they learned how to look, at various stages in their lives and studies, and what tips or methods they find helpful in the process.

We might provide some references as guides or handbooks for this instruction, whether self-taught, mentored, or a combination. For example, to what extent does the process of learning carefully how to look at one body of material transfer to another, that is, to another body of material or to another observer?

Related to this quest for learning how to look more fully at objects and original sources, so as better to understand them, is the need to consider how to describe what it is that we see. Describing can develop understanding the nature of the object more clearly. Putting that recognition into words with precision calls upon accuracy of terminology or nomenclature.

That complex subject might itself call for another Episode of its own. Let us see how this Episode take shape, and where it might lead.

Speakers include (in alphabetical order):

Nan Anantharaman, Mildred Budny, Michael Allman Conrad, David W. Sorenson, and others.

Vitas Patrum Folio 5A. Photography © Mildred Budny

Private Collection, Vitae Patrum, Folio 5A. Photography by Mildred Budny.

Registration

See the registration portal for our events.

RGME Eventbrite Collection

For this Episode, you can register through its own portal:

Episode 21 “Learning How to Look” Tickets

Registration for the Episode is free. The Zoom Link will be sent to you directly shortly before the event.

We welcome Voluntary Donations with your registration. See also:

Thank you for joining us!

*****

Questions? Suggestions?

Leave your comments or questions below
Contact Us

Visit our Social Media:

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

*****

Tags: Manuscript studies
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Episode 20. “Comic Book Theory for Medievalists”

January 16, 2025 in Manuscript Studies, Research Group Episodes for The Research Group Speaks, Research Group Speaks (The Series)

“The Research Group Speaks”
Episode 20

“Comic Book Theory
for Medievalists:
The Poetics”

Jesse D. Hurlbut

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

[Posted on 20 January 2025]

Our series wherein “The Research Group Speaks” continues with its Twentieth Episode in an exploration of the phenomenon of dynamic interactions between words and images found in books from widely distant centuries, yet in compellingly similar modes of presentation.

BnF, Fr, 1141, fol. 140v, detail.

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..

This Episode follows Episode 19 in January 2025 “At the Gate: RGME Activities for 2025” to launch our Theme for this Year, “Thresholds and Communities”, with reflections on the theme and an introduction to the suite of our multiple activities for 2025.

Episode 20 takes a look at an engaging didactic genre of illustrated books, whether in manuscript or print, which displays an unfolding story as the pages take their turns.

Which genre is that? Comic books, par excellence, along with their popular forerunners in medieval narratives of many kinds in which sequential series of images accompany or take over the story.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: BnF MS Fr. 1141, Comic Book Theory, Comic Books, Dream Visions, Guillaume de Diguillevile, Jesse D. Hurlbut, Jimmy Corigan, Manuscript studies, Medieval manuscripts, Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine, Words and Images
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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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RGME Workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.”

January 4, 2025 in Manuscript Studies, Workshops on "The Evidence of Manuscripts"

RGME Workshops
on
“The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.”

[Posted on 31 December 2024, with updates]

Private Collection, Pieces of a Vellum Leaf from a Medieval Manuscript: Recto. Photography by Mildred Budny.

In 2024 the RGME launched its series of Workshops dedicated to “The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.”

The series began in October 2024. So far they take place online as sessions of one and one-half hours, including scope for questions and answers. They are designed to teach and to crowdsource research on original materials, which may be newly discovered and so far unknown.

The workshops are free of charge. All are welcome to attend, join the discussion, and participate in the study of manuscripts and other original sources.

With this series, we revive an approach to collaborative events “On the Evidence of Manuscripts” which we nutured in our early years.

Our Early Series of Seminars
on “The Evidence of Manuscripts” (1989–1995)

RGME Logo in Black-and-White.

In its early years while based at the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence held a series of Seminars, Workshops, and Symposia (organized or co-organized by Mildred Budny) variously at the Parker Library and at other centers in England, Japan, and the United States. At libraries, the sessions took place over relevant manuscripts in the collection, supplemented by photographs. Elsewhere, the sessions were usually accompanied by displays or exhibitions of photographs (mostly by Mildred Budny).

Seminars, Workshops, Colloquia, and Symposia

In England, many of these sessions belonged to the series of Research Group Seminars on “The Evidence of Manuscripts.” Often they took place at the Parker Library in the company of the manuscripts under examination, sometimes also with early-printed books.

RGME Seminars on “The Evidence of Manuscripts”

View Toward the Entrance to the Parker Library in mid-1989 photograph © Mildred Budny

Harking back to our first series of events as the RGME, in the series of RGME Seminars on “The Evidence of Manuscripts” (1989–1994), this new series brings forward for collective study (‘crowdsourcing’ and collaboration) the original specimens as witnesses in our own RGME Special Collections and the RGME Lending Library

Foreground

“The Bridge of Signs”

View of the Pont Neuf, Paris. Photograph by Claudio Mota via https://www.pexels.com/photo/pont-neuf-bridge-in-paris-9999874/.

Registration for the Workshops

To register for individual workshops in the series, please visit the RGME Eventbrite Collection for “The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.”

RGME Collection: Workshops

Workshop 1
“Introducing the Farrell Leaf”
Sunday 17 November 2024

The first Workshop considers practices of manuscript studies and introduces the first specimen for collaborative examination. We meet the medieval Latin Vulgate Bible leaf from the Book of Numbers in the Jennah Farrell Leaf, now on loan to the RGME “Lending Library”.

For background information about this leaf based on the characteristics of the leaf itself and the owner’s knowledge about its provenance with reference to the previous owner, see

our Blog on Manuscript Studies
and its Manuscript Studies Contents List.

Medieval Latin Vulgate Bible manuscript: Verso, top. Photography by Mildred Budny.

Workshop 2
“Follow-Up for the Farrell Leaf”
Sunday 15 December 2024

At this workshop, comparing notes about our investigations which followed Workshop 1, we agreed that, most probably (and perhaps almost certainly), this leaf formerly belonged to the Saint Albans Bible, dispersed only in recent decades and now having its surviving leaves widely separated through the marketplace. On this bible see, for example:

King David in the Waters Blessed by God, in a pair of leaves sold at Christie’s on 10 July 2019 and now in the McCarthy Collection

Fuller confidence in this proposed identification of the Farrell Leaf as part of the Saint Albans Bible might have to await the discovery or recognition of one of the leaves which formerly stood immediately adjacent, that is, directly preceding this leaf or directly following it, with a continuous flow of the text from leaf to leaf.

We continue our explorations.

Medieval Latin Vulgate Bible manuscript: Verso, top. Photography by Mildred Budny.

Workshop 3
“The Farrell Leaf and its Context”
Sunday 12 January 2025

Next, we consider the Farrell Leaf in its context:

in its original manuscript,
in relation to other leaves bearing the work of its scribe and scribal artist,
among other representatives in its time of the genre of Vulgate Bible manuscripts of medium format, and
as a witness to its production and deconstruction, whereby individual leaves became scattered through the sales room, sometimes multiple times over before reaching ‘Forever Homes’.

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Latin Vulgate Bible Leaf: Verso, Bottom of Columns. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Registration:

Workshop 3. The Farrell Leaf and its Context: Tickets

*****

Workshop 4
“Manuscript Fragments Compared:
The Saint Albans Bible and Otto Ege MS 14”
Sunday 23 February 2025

Continuing our exploration of the Saint Albans Bible, from the previous Workshops (1–3), we now expand our scope to set its complex characteristics as a fragmentary, dispersed Latin Vulgate Bible manuscript in a wider context. Also, we can reveal another leaf from the same Bible, which came to our attention following Workshop 3.

We thank our Associate, Richard Weber, for sharing information and photographs about the leaf in his collection from the same manuscript, but from the New Testament portion.

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto: Top Right. Photograph by Richard Weber.

Note that, with permission, our blog has published discoveries for other leaves in Richard Weber’s collection. See:

At our Workshop, we may survey our progress for the Saint Albans Bible, as we collectively continue to explore the extent, range, and nature of its surviving parts, or to conjure up other parts for whom whereabouts are unknown from other sources as well as from the evidence of the leaves themselves or reports about them or the original manuscript. We can report the progress of the work to shape a list of known survivors, their present locations, their contents (which part of the Bible or the companion apparatus such as the glossary of Interpretations of Hebrew Names), span of text upon the individual fragments, and the citations about the manuscript and its fragments in books, articles, blogs, or sales catalogues.

In taking into consider other relatives of the genre, our quest can be twofold, taking into account

1) the genre of medieval Vulgate Bible manuscripts containing the full text of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, within a single volume; and

2) such manuscripts which have befallen the fate of dismemberment and distribution of individual leaves or groups of leaves through the saleroom or other means.

Accordingly, first we might consider the possible survivors of other works by the same scribes, artists, and workshop.

Next we can take note of other Vulgate Latin Bibles of the period which may have suffered the same fate through fragmentation, dispersal, and restorative efforts to recognize the fragments wherever they might survive, study their evidence closely, and, insofar as possible reconstruct the fragments at least virtually.

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

As a model for the latter, we turn to the case of the large-format Lectern Vulgate Bible which Otto F. Ege dispersed as his Manuscript 14, following his numeration of the specimen leaves which he selected for his portfolio of Fifty Original Leaves from Manuscripts of Western Europe (FOL). This manuscript we have been chasing for years in our research, as reported in our blog on Manuscript Studies. See its

Manuscript Studies: Contents List

A new Loan to the RGME brings a leaf from that Bible to the service of our RGME Workshops. Let us introduce it to you in the Workshop.

Information

Workshop 4. “Manuscript Fragments Compared”

Registration

Workshop 4. “Manuscript Fragments Compared”: Tickets

*****

Workshop 5
“Identifying Medieval Bible Manuscript Fragments”
Sunday 23 March 2025

We consider specimens from, for example,

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

Workshop 5 picks up where Workshop 4 left off, within the comparison of two medieval Latin Vulgate Bible manuscripts of different sizes and functions, as represented by some of their fragments. Formerly each comprised a single-volume Bible, with both Old and New Testaments.

These two manuscripts, the medium-format Saint Albans Bible and the large-format Otto Ege MS 14, merit further examination as we add another fragment into view. This discovery is a leaf from the Book of II Corinthians in the Collection of Richard Weber.

This leaf joins our quest to learn more about the original manuscripts and their context. We thank Richard for his generosity in sharing information of materials in his collection for our research and teaching.

After Workshop 4, Richard sent to the RGME a pair of single leaves from another dismembered Latin Vulgate Bible manuscript, this time a medium-format specimen in double columns of 53 lines. It belongs to the Chudleigh Bible, produced in northwestern France in the 13th century and dismembered after its sale in London in 1970. We will introduce the leaves at Workshop 5, to set their study in the context of our ongoing quest to learn more about the fragments Saint Albans Bible and Ege MS 14 and their original manuscripts.

This workshop could, for now, round out our introductory set of workshops on medieval Bible manuscripts, as other sorts of manuscript fragments have also come forward for study and teaching.

Would you like to join us in writing up the reports or blogposts about these leaves as they have come to light?

This workshop continues the demonstration of detective techniques for learning how to identify manuscript fragments which might come to light with little or no companion information. Using different manuscripts and their fragments as case studies, we advance with the quest to learn more about looking at the original sources. More surprises and discoveries may emerge.

Registration

Workshop 5. “Identifying Medieval Bible Manuscript Fragments”. Tickets

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

*****

Workshop 6
“What’s In a Name?
Guides to Nomenclature for Manuscript Studies”
Sunday 27 April 2025

Jan Van Eyck, The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele, 1434–36, Bruges, Groeningemuseum (detail), image from the Closer to Van Eyck project (https://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be/)

By request, we will consider ‘best practices’ with regard to the use of Nomenclature for Manuscript Studies.

We explore the range of terms in use (in English and other languages) for different parts of books, from the outside in. In this way, we consider the merits — or otherwise — of terms in use for different parts of manuscripts, books, bindings, and other features of the material evidence of written sources. How helpful and comprehensible are the systems of terminology?

Examples of reference works online and in print will be examined, with observations on their usefulness for various purposes, types of books, problems, and approaches.

Do you have specific questions? We can help.

Extra

After our Workshops 1–5, another medieval Latin Vulgate Bible leaf has come to light. The owner has given permission for us to study the leaf as part of our ongoing project on medieval manuscript fragments.

Private Collection. Leaf from a Medieval Latin Vulgate Bible, Manuscript, ‘Verso’.

We will introduce the leaf so that it can begin to join the world of knowledge about dispersed medieval manuscripts which come to light in the work for virtually reconstructing their original codices, insofar as the identified and located fragments can allow.

Information

Workshop 6. “What’s In A Name?”

Registration

Workshop 6. “What’s In a Name?” Tickets

*****

Workshop 7
“Fragments & Documents”

Sunday 29 June 2025

This workshop will continue our exploration of fragments and open our investigations to the realm of documents, which resemble manuscript materials in certain respects, but also present significant differences from them. Our Workshop will consider the differences and similarities as we compare and contract techniques and methodologies from manuscript studies, fragmentology, and diplomatics.

Information

Examples may include the “Preston Series”.
See:
Manuscript Studies: Contents List for Preston Charters

Registration

Workshop 7. “Fragments and Documents”: Tickets

Preston Charter 12 Face with Seal. Photograph Mildred Budny.

*****

Workshop 8
“Face the Music, or,
Where Manuscript Meets Print in a Hybrid Book:
An Early-Modern German Herbal
with a Reused Binding Fragment
from a Medieval Musical Manuscript”

Sunday 26 October 2025

This workshop will examine a puzzling vellum fragment (or is it a set of patchwork fragments?) in a private collection. The fragment(s) come(s) from a single musical manuscript in Latin on vellum laid out in double columns with text and notation on 4-line staves. The reused medieval material forms the outer covering of a 17th-century printed book in German on laid paper.

We will work to decipher the visible parts of the text and music, identify the readings/lections and chants, and, if possible (given the fragmentary nature), determine the probable genre of original manuscript, such as lectionary, breviary, or missal. Perhaps we might find other survivors from the same despoiled medieval manuscript.

Plus we will exclaim over the features of the printed book, which includes illustrations and marginalia in forms of annotations demonstrating attention of several kinds.

What brought this medieval musical fragment and early modern printed book together? Even if we might never know all the answers, won’t it be fun to question how and why? There is a story here.

We love the puzzle, and give thanks to the collector for lending the book to the RGME for study and teaching.

Information

Workshop 8. A Hybrid Book where Medieval Music Meets Early-Modern Herbal
We invite you to join our collaborative quest to learn more about the different parts of the ensemble.

Registration for the Workshop

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/workshop-8-a-hybrid-book-with-astrological-herbal-and-medieval-missal-tickets-1340074201009

The Manuscript Fragment and the Printed Book

Private Collection, Front Cover with Reused Medieval Musical Fragment on Vellum. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Title Page

[Bartholomaeus Carrichter (1510–1574)], Horn des Heyls menschlicher Blödigkeit, oder Kreütterbuch, darinn die Kreütter des Teutschenlands auss dem Liecht der Natur nach rechter Art der himmelischen Einfliessungen beschriben / durch Philomusum Anonymum [Bartholomäus Carrichter], with a foreword by Michael Toxites, born Johann Michael Schütz (1514–1581), (Strassbourg: Anton Bertram, DCVI/1606).

Private Collection, Kreutterbuch, title page. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

For the first edition of 1576, printed in Straßburg, see an online digital facsimile of a copy in Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek. For an edition of 1619 also printed by A. Bertram, see the copy in the Wellcome Collection.

Like the 1619 edition, this folio volume has 10 unnumbered pages, 180 numbered pages, and 5 unnumbered leaves, with a woodcut title page and outline illustrations.

*****

Workshop 9
“Books as Thresholds and Communities”

Sunday 21 December 2025

As the year 2025 draws to a close, we reflect on our Theme for the Year, “Thresholds and Communities” particularly as it applies to our explorations of books and their makers, users, collectors, readers, and others — through our series of workshops and other events — and as we prepare for next year and its new theme. Now we consider how manuscripts and printed books or other written materials might function as Thresholds and represent or foster Communities

Thresholds and Communities: RGME Theme for the Year 2025

We draw inspiration from our year’s activities, conversations, and insights. We may reflect on the multiple ways that they offered encounters with books of many kinds, from different ages and places, and with many voices, sometimes in harmony. With such perspectives, we might brace for, prepare for, and choose to welcome the new year.

Poster 2. 2025 Autumn Colloquium. Poster set in RGME Bembino.

Because the 2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium in late November will consider the subject of Fragments (manuscript and printed) from many perspectives, we may discuss some discoveries from that event and follow up with more materials which it helped to bring to light.

2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium on Fragments

For example, do you have any manuscript or printed fragments that you would like to share or learn about? Bring them along, please, to our Zoom Meeting. Let’s see what we might learn together, and share the delight of discovery.

Part of the voyage, we have learned, brings the refreshing reconstitution or renewal of scattered and seemingly disparate fragments, to form new forms of communities fostered by books and the meanings or stories of human lives across time which they can convey.

Information

Workshop 9 on “Thresholds and Communities”

Registration

Workshop 9. Tickets

See you there!

Illumination from Hildegard’s Scivias (1151) showing her receiving a vision and dictating to teacher Volmar. Image Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

******

Workshop 10. Sunday 29 March 2026
” ‘Transformations and Renewals’ in our Ongoing Studies”

For this workshop, we show examples of our selected theme for the year in action for the close study of material evidence in books. On the theme, see:

RGME Theme for the Year 2026: “Transformations and Renewals”

For an exploration of the theme as applied to and manifested in books, see our Episode 24 (Sunday 18 April 2026) on “Transformations and Renewals by Way of Books”.

In Workshop 10, we take note of multiple discoveries so far in our series. From workshop to workshop, discoveries have come to light through our own continuing research and the revelations of materials in private or public collections which correspond to some specimens highlighted in one or more workshops.

We survey multiple discoveries for a variety of manuscripts, manuscript fragments, printed books, and combinations of printed books with reused manuscript fragments as a re-created form of hybrid book mixing media, periods of production, genres of book, and sometimes also languages in their different layers or components between, upon, and around the covers.

There is much to report. Examples, depending upon time allotted, might include more specimens from the dismembered Chudleigh Bible, an update about the dismembered Saint Albans Bible (the subject of our first four Workshops), new results from on-going RGME studies of missals dismembered by Otto F. Ege (notably the Cistercian Missal of “Ege MS 2,” as featured in our recent 2026 RGME Colloquium at the Grolier Club, and the Warburg Missal of “Ege MS 22“), and discoveries of more cases of hybrid 16th-century printed books from Germany with medieval Latin missal fragments (such as Medieval Missal Fragment as Early-Modern Cover).

We take note of the successful function and generously shared results of our RGME Workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.” so far, as we celebrate the tenth in their series and look toward the future, with thanks to participants, audience, collaborators, collectors, students, advisers, and lovers of books.

Bring your questions, favorite cases, puzzles, and observations to the conversation!

Registration

Workshop 10. “Transformations and Renewals” in our Ongoing Studies

J. S. Wagner Collection, Ege Manuscript 22, Folio clvi, verso: Top Left. Reproduced by permission.

*************

Workshop 11
Sunday 9 August 2026
“Early-Modern Archives in Old and New England”

For this workshop we consider the challenges and opportunities of studying a rich selection of archival materials produced in the early seventeenth-century. Mildred Budny will explore cases of women’s wills, centered upon a holograph specimen of 1604 for the widow Sarah Overton of Southold, Long Island, and antecedents among Anglo-Saxon noblewomen’s wills of the tenth century, including the Will of Æthelgifu . Hannah Goeselt will analyze the legacy of a manuscript documenting the proceedings of the House of Commons for the year 1628 as it survives in American contexts, notably in the Massachusetts Historical Society Library. These cases may serve to highlight the nature of inventories, estate lists, wills, documentary records, literacy, and early collecting in colonial North America.

We welcome the chance to learn about other cases and projects concerning such materials. Please let us know about your interests in them. Contact us!

Boston, Massachusetts Historical Society Library, Ms. N-1325, “House of Commons Proceedings, 1628”, fols. 73v-74r. Photograph by Hannah Goeselt.

*****************

Workshop 12, Etc.
Subjects To Be Determined (We accept requests!)

Among subjects requested are:

Cataloging Manuscripts: Readers’ Perspectives
Or, A User’s Guide to the Catalogue You Always Wanted
Now also see:

RGME Episode 26 (Saturday 25 July 2026)
“Catalog(u)ing Collections and Materials:
Processes, Challenges, Requests, and Opportunities”
Part 1 of a Series
The Research Group Speaks: The Series

Manuscripts and (or Versus) Photography
A User’s Guide

‘Hybrid Books’: What Are They?
Examples and Case-Studies

*****

Questions? Suggestions?

Leave your comments or questions below
Contact Us

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our Facebook Page
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our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
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Join the Friends of the RGME.

*****

Private Collection, Pieces of a Vellum Leaf from a Medieval Manuscript: Verso. Photography by Mildred Budny.

Tags: Chudleigh Bible, Collection of Jennah Farrell, Collection of Richard Weber, Farrell Leaf, Latin Vulgate Bibles, manuscript fragments, Manuscript studies, Medieval manuscripts, Otto Ege MS 14, Otto F. Ege, RGME Seminars on the Evidence of Manuscripts, RGME Workshops, The Saint Albans Bible
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The Manuscript as Creative Undercurrent:

Reflections on the Reissue of Glassgold’s “Englishings” of Poems by Boethius

Dana Delibovi

Riffing on the English translators

Undercurrents— Pictorial, Methodological, and Ekphrastic

1. Pictorial Inspiration

2. Methodological Inspiration

3. Ekphrasis

Looking Ahead

Illustrations

Figure 1

King Alfred’s Boethius

Figure 2

Chaucer’s Boethius

Figure 3

Queen Elizabeth I’s Boethius

Figure 4

Peter Glassgold’s Boethius

Notes

Landmarks

Achievements for the RGME Anniversary Year

Reflections on the Year’s RGME Visits (In Person, Virtual, and Hybrid) to Special Collections

RGME Visits to Special Collections in 2024

Spring and Autumn Symposium as a Pair, with Follow-Up

Spring Symposium “Between Past and Future” April (hybrid)

Autumn Symposium “At The Helm” October (online)

In-Person/Online Visit November (hybrid)

Culmination and Achievements

“Starters’ Orders” Competition for Favorite Recipes

Appetizers, Hors d’Oeuvres, Canapés, and Starters

Round 2 of the Competition for the Favorite Recipes of the Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Starters’ Orders

Prizes and Incentives

From Soup to Nuts

Comments, questions, or suggestions?

Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible in the Collection of Richard Weber

Double columns of 46 lines in Gothic Script with Decorated Initials, Bar-Extensions, and Running Titles Acts 26:14 (est tibi) – Acts 28:9 (insula habe[/-bant] )

Northern France, circa 1330

The Weber Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible

The Apostle Paul, His Travels, and His Travails

The Leaf, Its Contents, and Its Presentation

The Recto

The Verso

The Seller’s Description

Join the Quest

RGME Workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.” (Formerly: “Examining Original Sources”)

Workshop 4 “Manuscript Fragments Compared”

Sunday 23 February 2025 1:00- 2:30 p.m. EST (GMT-4) by Zoom

The Series

Workshop 4

Resources for the Quest

Registration

Information about the series

Questions? Suggestions?

“Thresholds and Communities” Our Theme for 2025

Doorways as Grand Entrances

Thresholds in Literature

Import of a Theme, Place, or Possibility

Theme and Opportunities

Places and Fields of Studies to Enter

Pertinacity

Possibilities and Choices

“The Research Group Speaks” Episode 21

“Learning How to Look” A Roundtable

Saturday 24 May 2025 1:00–2:30 pm EST (GMT-5) by Zoom

The Plan

Registration

Questions? Suggestions?

“The Research Group Speaks” Episode 20

“Comic Book Theory for Medievalists: The Poetics”

Jesse D. Hurlbut

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

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

Colloquium ‘Home Page’ for information and updates

The Manuscript
as
Creative Undercurrent:

Reflections on the Reissue of
Glassgold’s “Englishings” of Poems by Boethius

Undercurrents—
Pictorial, Methodological, and Ekphrastic

Reflections on the Year’s RGME Visits
(In Person, Virtual, and Hybrid)
to Special Collections

Spring and Autumn Symposium as a Pair,
with Follow-Up

Spring Symposium “Between Past and Future”
April (hybrid)

Autumn Symposium “At The Helm”
October (online)

In-Person/Online Visit
November (hybrid)

“Starters’ Orders”
Competition for Favorite Recipes

Appetizers, Hors d’Oeuvres,
Canapés, and Starters

Round 2
of the Competition
for the Favorite Recipes of the Friends
of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible
in the Collection of Richard Weber

Double columns of 46 lines in Gothic Script
with Decorated Initials, Bar-Extensions,
and Running Titles
Acts 26:14 (est tibi) – Acts 28:9 (insula habe[/-bant] )

The Weber Leaf
from the Saint Albans Bible

RGME Workshops
on
“The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.”
(Formerly: “Examining Original Sources”)

Workshop 4
“Manuscript Fragments Compared”

Sunday 23 February 2025
1:00- 2:30 p.m. EST (GMT-4) by Zoom

“Thresholds and Communities”
Our Theme for 2025

“The Research Group Speaks”
Episode 21

“Learning How to Look”
A Roundtable

Saturday 24 May 2025
1:00–2:30 pm EST (GMT-5) by Zoom

“The Research Group Speaks”
Episode 20

“Comic Book Theory
for Medievalists:
The Poetics”

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

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

Colloquium ‘Home Page’
for information and updates

RGME Workshops
on
“The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.”

Our Early Series of Seminars
on “The Evidence of Manuscripts” (1989–1995)

Workshop 1
“Introducing the Farrell Leaf”
Sunday 17 November 2024

Workshop 2
“Follow-Up for the Farrell Leaf”
Sunday 15 December 2024

Workshop 3
“The Farrell Leaf and its Context”
Sunday 12 January 2025

Workshop 4
“Manuscript Fragments Compared:
The Saint Albans Bible and Otto Ege MS 14”
Sunday 23 February 2025

Workshop 5
“Identifying Medieval Bible Manuscript Fragments”
Sunday 23 March 2025

Workshop 6
“What’s In a Name?
Guides to Nomenclature for Manuscript Studies”
Sunday 27 April 2025

Workshop 7
“Fragments & Documents”

Workshop 8
“Face the Music, or,
Where Manuscript Meets Print in a Hybrid Book:
An Early-Modern German Herbal
with a Reused Binding Fragment
from a Medieval Musical Manuscript”

Workshop 9
“Books as Thresholds and Communities”

Workshop 10. Sunday 29 March 2026
” ‘Transformations and Renewals’ in our Ongoing Studies”

Workshop 11
Sunday 9 August 2026
“Early-Modern Archives in Old and New England”

Workshop 12, Etc.
Subjects To Be Determined (We accept requests!)