Handlist of Resources for Manuscript Studies and Fragmentology

Handlist of Resources
for
Manuscript Studies
and Fragmentology

Co-Compiled by Hannah Goeselt
and Mildred Budny

[Posted on 6 November 2024]

This Handlist serves as a gathering place for resources in print and digital forms for research, study, and teaching of manuscripts, documents, fragments, and other materials. We welcome suggestions and additions.

This Handlist complements and partly overlaps with our handlist complied as part of our work for the series of roundtables and other events dedicated to exploring catalogues, metadata, and databases:

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 first items for the Handlist of Resources for Manuscript Studies and Fragmentology arrive as we prepare the new series of RGME Workshops on “Looking at Manuscripts, Etc.” The series forms a return to and expansion of our early series of RGME Seminars on the Evidence of Manuscripts (1989–1995), as our interests and research have extended across the years into more subjects, periods, languages, genres, and media, all centered insofar as possible upon close examination of original sources and/or surrogates guided by informed study of their evidence and their contexts.

RGME Workshops on Original Sources
for Research and Teaching

These new Workshops will begin in November 2024, as we collectively examine a detached medieval leaf on vellum with part of the Book of Numbers in a medium-format Latin Bible in the Vulgate Version. It is currently on loan (since June 2024) to the RGME Library & Archives from the Collection of Jennah Farrell, for the purposes of conservation, photography, research, teaching, and publication.

Preparing for the Workshops, we articulate principles and practices in their first blogpost:

The Companion Handlist

Titles are listed in alphabetical order by authors’ or editors’ surnames.

This Handlist functions as a living document, and we will be adding to it as we go along. Please join the quest!

Terminology, Definitions, and Handbooks
for Describing Manuscripts and Printed Books

  • Peter Beal, A Dictionary of Manuscript Terminology, 1450–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009; reprinted 2013)
  • Sidney E. Berger, The Dictionary of the Book: A Glossary for Book Collectors, Booksellers, Librarians, and Others (London, etc.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd edition, 2023)
  • Michelle P. Brown. Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms (London: The British Library Board in association with the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009)
  • —— Revised Edition of that title, by Elizabeth C. Teviotdale and Nancy K. Turner (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018)
  • Geoffrey Ashall Glaister, Glaister’s Glossary of the Book: Terms used in Papermaking, Printing, Bookbinding and Publishing, with Notes on Illuminated Manuscripts and Private Presses (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, second edition, completely revised, 1979)

Manuscript Studies

  • Alessandro Bausi et al., editors, Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies: An Introduction (COMSt [Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies], 2015).
  • Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2007)
  • Da Rold, Orietta and Elaine Treharne (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Medieval British Manuscripts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)
  • Christopher de Hamel, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World (New York: Penguin Press, 2017)
  • Christopher de Hamel, The Manuscripts Club: The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts (New York: Penguin Press, 2023)
  • Kathryn James, English Palaeography and Manuscript Culture, 1500–1800 (New Haven and London: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, 2020)

Palaeography

  • Coulson, Frank T. and Robert G. Babcock (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)
  • Derolez, Albert, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books: from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Fragmentology

Blogs

Provenance

  • Raymond I. Page, Matthew Parker and His Books: Sandars Lectures in Bibliography Delivered on 14, 16, and 18 May 1990 at the University of Cambridge (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications in Association with the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 1993)
  • University of Kansas LibGuides, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts: Provenance https://guides.lib.ku.edu/medieval-and-early-modern-manuscripts/resources-provenance

Documents

References

  • Adriano Capelli, Lexicon Abbreviaturum: Dizionario di Abbreviature latine ed italiane (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 6th edition, 1990). Online via Capelli Online
  • Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Kent, MEMSLib Palaeography

Of Interest

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Suggestions and Additions?

Please place your suggestions or questions below in the Comments, Contact Us, or visit

We look forward to hearing from you.

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Full-page, framed illustration of the Mass of Saint Gregory on a detached leaf from a prayerbook. Photography © Mildred Budny

Private Collection, Vellum leaf with illustration of “Gregory Mass”, verso. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Leaf with Gregory Mass illustration on black background. Photography © Mildred Budny

Private Collection, Vellum leaf with illustration of “Gregory Mass”. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

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