Manuscript Studies, Documents Included

Initial M for “Manus” (“Hand”)

In 2015, we began our series of blogposts on ‘Manuscript Studies’, reporting and illustrating a variety of manuscripts, fragments, and documents.  Mostly these materials belong to different owners who allow us to study them long-term and report the research results. We thank them for their generosity and trust.

Manuscript Studies take time. It’s not the only way, but it is a good way.  (Whatever Works, Right?)

Some of us dedicate our time and effort to it.  You know, I have dedicated my life to it.  Not sure that it was the right thing (the Memoirs will be right interesting, and time will tell, not done yet), but the quest continues both to challenge and inspire.  Plus the responses to the blogposts give further inspiration.

A list of links for some of the first posts in this series has appeared here:

Manuscripts On My Mind, Number 16 (September 2015), page 12.

Contents List

The fuller Contents List is here, as it evolves.  Here we note the unfolding series.

Photography © Mildred Budny

“Show & Tell” Seminar on Manuscripts & Their Photographs
A Seminar at the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University
(With a Preview of a Despoiled Book of Hours Recently Discovered in France, shown here at the left)

The ‘Foundling Hospital’ for Manuscript Fragments
The Case of a Favorite Manuscript, Ripped Up, Alas, by the Center That Made It, but Thank Goodness They Left Something to Tell the Tale

Lost and Foundlings
The Sellers’ Tells, Sadly

Manuscript Groupies
Light-Hearted View of Group Portraits, when it comes to Manuscripts and Their Best Sides, Photo Ops Included

Curiouser and Curiouser
A Most Strange Seal on a Paper Document of A.D. 1345, Old Style, from Grenoble

‘Curiouser and Curiouser’

Scrap of Information
A Puzzling Fragment from a French Charter with the Date, Maybe Accurate, of 1538

Full Court Preston
A Pair of 13th-Century Documents from Preston, Near Ipswich, in Suffolk

Notarial Roll of 1305 from Cesena
A Complete Documentary Scroll from Emelia-Romagna in North-East Italy, with Notarial Sign and Signature

A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 41’
Part of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great and Other Texts from a Manuscript Plundered in World War I

S for ‘Salue’ in ‘Otto Ege MS 8’

A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 61’
Ezekiel from a 32-Line Vulgate Pocket Bible from France

A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 8’
Latin Processional for Palm Sunday for Singing Nuns

A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’
Part of the Interpretation of Hebrew Names
from a 50-line Vulgate Latin Lectern Bible with Splendid Decoration and Illustration, as Once Was

More Leaves from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 51’
Detached Leaves from Ege’s Erfurt Manuscript of 1365 CE of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics
in Latin Translation on Paper

The Mass of Saint Gregory, Illustrated
A Leaf from a 15^th-Century Prayerbook

A Leaf from the Office of the Dead
A Single Leaf, Trimmed Down in Spoliation, to Produce a Decorated Tidbit on Its Own

Lectionary with Gregory’s Homily 38 on the Gospel of Mark

Leaf from a Tiny Book of Hours
Leaf from within the Hours of the Virgin from an Unknown Manuscript

Three Leaves from a Latin Religious Pocket Handbook
Three Discontinuous Leaves from Diverse Treatises
including Eadmer’s “Treatise on the Conception of the Virgin Mary”

Part-Leaf from a Large-Format Lectionary
Parts of I Maccabees 10 and Homily XXXVII on the Gospels by Gregory the Great

Written in the Stars
Roman Breviary Fragment with Latin Lections on Astrology from Sermons by Patristic Authors
Plus a Prayer for the Dead

Spoonful of Sugar
A Reused Medieval Bifolium from a Latin Treatise on Medicinal Substances

Folder from Front

It’s A Wrap
Laying Down the Law
A Leaf from the Novellae Constitutiones of the Emperor’s “Novels”, Numbers 159.2 and 134.1-3
Plus Embellishments

A Reused Part-Leaf from Bede’s Homilies on the Gospels
A Part-Leaf from a 14th-Century Large-Format Copy of Bede’s Homilies on the Gospels in Double Columns of 26 or More Lines
Perhaps Made in France

A Part-Leaf from the “Life of Saint Blaise”
Part of a Leaf from the Saint’s “First” Life in a Lectionary Reused as Binding Material

Cover-Up
A Medieval Bifolium from a Medium-Format Latin Psalter Reused as the Cover of the Binding of an 19th-Century Paper Notebook
With Receipts in French

New Testament Leaves in Old Armenian
Detached Leaves with Parts of the Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s Epistle to the Romans
With a Downloadable Booklet

More to come . . .

*****