2016 Congress Report

May 19, 2016 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Bembino, Business Meeting, Conference, ICMS, Kalamazoo, Reception, Reports

Jesse Meyer demonstrates the squirrel parchment prepared for the Research Group's Session, at the 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies. 13 May 2016. Photography © Mildred Budny

Show & Tell. Photography by Mildred Budny

51st International Congress on Medieval Studies

12–15 May 2016

Report

[Published on 18 May 2016, with updates]

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence reports its activities accomplished at the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies, held at Kalamazoo, Michigan.

After the completion of

our Congress Planning, which reported the Sessions selected by the Congress Committee,
our 2016 Congress Call for Papers, which described the aims of the Sessions, and
our Congress Program, which set forth the schedule for our Sessions and other Activities
(together with the Abstracts of some Papers),

we now Report its achievements. They include the notice of a couple of late changes to the Program of individual Sessions, the unveiling — with the publication here — of both the Posters for our multiple activities at the Congress and an illustrated Program Booklet for a pair of co-sponsored Sessions, and other developments. These publications, as is our practice, are set in our copyright multilingual font Bembino and laid out in accordance with our Style Manifesto. You may view them below.

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Tags: Balkan Studies, Bembino, Business Meeting, Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Florida, History of Paper, Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, magic in manuscript, Medieval Writing Materials, Parchment making, Reception, Societas Magica
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Marginalia in Books for 2016 M-MLA

May 10, 2016 in Conference, Conference Announcement

Border States:
Marginalia in North American Manuscripts and Printed Books

Two Panels
Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
and Organized by Justin Hastings
(Department of English, Loyola University Chicago)

at the Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M-MLA)
to be held on 10-13 November 2016 at St. Louis, Missouri

[Posted on 10 May 2016, with updates. A further update appears in the 2016 M-MLA Report.]

Invitation Letter, Plus Marginalia, for 24 June 1994.

Invitation Letter, Plus Marginalia, for ‘Marginalia in Manuscripts’, 24 June 1994

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, in keeping with the M-MLA conference’s theme of “Border States,” announces the following pair of Special Session Panels examining materials in North American collections. The responses to the Call for Papers for our sponsored Special Session yielded two panels rather than one, and extend their scope both temporally and geographically.

The subjects, and their extended range, accord well with the Research Group’s long-term interest in the physical characteristics of books, their modes of production, and their processes of use across time. The subject of “Marginalia in Manuscripts” formed the focus of one of the Seminars on “The Evidence of Manuscripts” in our early years based in the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College. Our blog on “Manuscript Studies” — plus some printed books — includes reports of discoveries grounded in close analysis of their surfaces, marginalia often included. Do we practice what we preach? Well, we prefer to refrain from writing in books belonging to others, as we recommend to you, but our own pages? That might be different. Witness the Master Copy of the Invitation Letter to that Seminar (see here). Marginalia Lives On!

For the 2016 Panels, we publish the Abstracts for the Papers in stages, starting now. The publication of the Convention timetable allows us also to report the schedule for our Sessions.

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Tags: Aesop's Fables, Book of Hours, California Gold Rush, Curricular Romulus, Dance of Death, Danse Macabre, J H Gybon Spilsbury, John Ker Duke of Roxburghe, John Lydgate, Justin Hastings, Manuscript Marginalia, Manuscript studies, Marginalia, Midwest Modern Language Association, Newberry Library, Office of the Dead, Otto Ege's Manuscripts, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M 359, Thomas Hoccleve
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Spoonful of Sugar

April 27, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition

A Reused Medieval Bifolium from a
Latin Treatise on Medicinal Substances

13th Century?

Double columns of 57 lines
with rubricated headings
and
initials and paraph marks
rendered in alternately red or blue pigment
and embellished with extended penline-flourishes in the contrasting pigment

Continuing our blog on Manuscript Studies, we illustrate a fragmentary medieval bifolium, much damaged, from a large-format manuscript retrieved (without recording the contextual information) from its long-term reuse as the vellum cover of an unknown book with a thick back. The reuse, at an unknown stage, presumably took advantage of an out-of-date medicinal textbook. Shame on the retrievers for not recording and letting us know the location from which the bifolium was removed.

Whereas many reused medieval manuscripts survive from discarded religious texts rendered obsolete by changes in liturgical practices and religious beliefs, for example during the Reformation, the French Revolution, or less catastrophic (r)evolutions, this case represents a relic, or battered fossil, of advances — or anyway transitions — in scientific, medical, pharmaceutical, and related spheres of knowledge in Western Europe. Some of our posts describe the former; now we turn to the latter. Here, we mainly allow the pictures to do the talking.

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Tags: Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Medieval Manuscript Fragments, medieval medicinal treatises
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Written in the Stars

April 21, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition

Breviary Fragment with Latin Lections on Astrology
from Sermons by Patristic Authors,
plus a Prayer

Detail of Folio Ivb, with the top of the column, within the first set of lections extracted from Homily 10 on the Gospels by Gregory the Great. Reproduced by permission.

Private Collection, Roman Breviary Fragment, Detail of Folio Ivb. Reproduced by permission.

[Published on 21 April 2016, with updates]

Our blog on Manuscript Studies observes a pair of consecutive leaves on vellum from the end of a 15th century Latin Breviary, possibly Italian, with a series of lections concerned with the nature of stellar determinism. All in favor of its rejection, all in favor of divine essence instead.

The Patristic authors of these extracts are by Pope Leo the Great, Gregory the Great, and Augustine of Hippo. Heavy hitters when it comes to rhetoric and theology, that’s for sure.

In a nutshell: The readings maintain that first Christ came to earth, and the stars followed. Not vice versa. So much for astrology, huh?

That a scrawling entry following those lections records a prayer for an unknown dead individual adds an extra resonance to the awareness of the fate of human beings on this earth. The original and added texts thus enter into a tacit form of dialogue on the themes of divine and human destiny.

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Tags: Astrology, Augustine of Hippo, Gregory the Great, Lectionary, Leo the Great, Medieval Manuscript Fragments, Medieval manuscripts, prayers for the dead, Roman Breviary, stellar determinism
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Part-Leaf from a Large-Format Lectionary

April 12, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition

Parts of I Maccabees 10 and
Homily 38 on the Gospels by Gregory the Great

Fragmentary leaf probably from a large-format Lectionary
Parts of I Maccabees 10 and
Homily XXXVIII on the Gospels by Gregory the Great
Reduced to the lower part of the former leaf
for reuse as a wrapper or binder for unknown materials

Budny Handlist 2

Here is the next in our series of blogposts on Manuscript Studies, which have an updated Contents List. This time, Mildred Budny reports on another item in her Handlist of a set of materials in manuscript and print. Earlier posts considered its Numbers 4, 7, 9, 11, and 13. This time, we visit a 12th-century fragment found in Italy and published here for the first time. Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Basilica of San Clemente, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Dot Porter, Gregory the Great, Homilies of Gregory the Great, Homily XXXVIII on the Gospels, Lectionary, Lisa Fagin Davis, Maccabbees I, Manuscript Leaf Reused as a Wrapper, Manuscript studies, Medieval Academy of America Meeting, Medieval Manuscript Fragments
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A Leaf from the Office of the Dead

March 15, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition

A Part of the Office of the Dead

from a 15th-century Book of Hours
made in Flanders
(perhaps at Bruges or Antwerp)
circa 1470

A single leaf, trimmed down in spoliation
to produce a decorated tidbit on its own
Circa 135 mm × 100 mm
< written area circa 66 × 50 mm >
Single column of 17 lines

Budny Handlist 12

Our series of posts by Mildred Budny on Manuscript Studies continues with a somber view of a detached leaf from the Office of the Dead in a gracefully decorated Book of Hours from Flanders. With this post, given the subject of the manuscript text, we also reflect wistfully on the passing of some friends, colleagues, and others dear to us. The occasion prompts us to offer a personal recollection of Jennifer O’Reilly (1943–2016).

Text and Layout

Manifestly the text on this detached leaf demonstrates that it forms part of the Office of the Dead. On its own, it is not exactly clear for which part of that Office this part of the text was intended to serve, mainly because there are no indications upon the leaf, and because the assigned practices for liturgical observance could vary considerably from place to place, custom to custom, and time to time.

Such is the nature of Books of Hours, a widely popular and personal genre of manuscripts or printed books in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. At least we know which part of that set of texts, that is, the Office of the Dead, to which this leaf pertained in its original setting, although we cannot be certain of its specifically intended purpose, that is, which part of that particular Office. Discovery of other parts of the original book might reveal such features more precisely. Meanwhile, let us see what we can see.

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Tags: 2002 British Museum Colloquium, Book of Hours, Detached Leaves, Jennifer O'Reilly, Josephine Edmonds Case, Manuscript Conservation, manuscript fragments, Manuscript Illumination, Office of the Dead, Swimming Lessons, Wedding Present
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A Part-Leaf from the ‘Life of Saint Blaise’

March 8, 2016 in Events, Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition

Part of a Leaf from the Saint’s ‘First’ Life
in a Lectionary
Reused as Binding Material

[First published on 8 March 2016, with updates.]

Here continues our blog by Mildred Budny on Manuscript Studies, for which the Contents List offers a guide to the series. Now we look at a fragment from a 12th-century manuscript containing, or partly containing, one or more saints’ lives intended for reading aloud.

A fragmentary vellum leaf in Latin now in a private collection represents a remnant of the Passio Sancti Blasii Episcopi et Martiris (‘The Suffering of Saint Blaise, Bishop and Martyr’) from a manuscript dismembered for recycled use. Laid out in double columns, the text is written in upright proto-Gothic script of circa 1170 CE from an as-yet unknown center.

Similarly, the medieval ownership of the leaf remains unknown, although the reuse as a limp vellum cover for an 18th-century paper notebook comprising a register of receipts in French presumably indicates the location of the leaf, if not the rest of its book, at least by the early modern period. Given the fragmentary nature of the surviving evidence, we’ll take all we can get.

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Tags: Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Medieval Manuscript Fragments, Passio Sancti Blasii
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Marginalia in Manuscripts and Books in North America

March 4, 2016 in Conference, Events

Border States:
Marginalia in North American Manuscripts and Printed Books

Call for Papers

Two Panels
Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
and Organized by Justin Hastings
(Department of English, Loyola University College, Chicago)

at the Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M-MLA)
to be held on 10-13 November 2016 at St. Louis, Missouri

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, in keeping with the M-MLA conference’s theme of “Border States,” proposes the following pair of panels on materials in North American collections.

I. Between Text and Page: Marginalia in Medieval Manuscripts

II. Between Manuscript Page and Printed Page — And Back Again

The panels invite all approaches, including textual, art historical, codicological, and paleographical.

Interested panelists should send brief abstracts of no more than 300 words to jhastings@luc.edu by 5 April 2016.

Justin Hastings for
The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Department of English
Loyola University Chicago
1032 W Sheridan Road
Chicago, Illinois 60626

Soon we will post the programs for these panels, as the selection progresses.

*****

Facing pages in an opening of a dismembered manuscript, with a marginal addition in the originally blank second column at the end of the original text. Private collection, reproducted by permission.

A manuscript fragment and its marginalia. Private collection, reproduced by permission.

Information about this marginal entry and its manuscript context appears in Written In the Stars.

*****

Note. We met Justin through his participation in the Research Group’s co-sponsored Session on Medieval Manuscripts in North American Collections at the 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies. The Abstract for his Paper is published here: Hastings (2013 Congress). We thank him for his continuing contributions and his organizational expertise.

*****

For information about the Events of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, to which these Sponsored Panels belong, please see our Events and Events Archive.

For convenience, we maintain a distinction between our Events elsewhere (in various centers in North America and beyond) and our many Congress Activities over the years at the Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, likewise with a Congress Archive, held at Western Michigan University each May in Kalamazoo.

The pair of panels intended for the 2016 M-MLA Convention represent the first time, apart from the Kalamazoo Congress, that the Research Group sponsors meetings within a conference held in North America.

We look forward to your contributions to this new stage in the history of the Research Group.

*****

Tags: Books in North America, Manuscripts & Early Printed Books, Marginalia, medieval manuscripts in North America, Midwest Modern Language Association
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2016 Symposium on ‘Words & Deeds’

February 1, 2016 in Bembino, Conference Announcement, Events

Initial C of Concede. Detail from a leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 15’, the ‘Beauvais Missal’. Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Photograph by Lisa Fagin Davis. Reproduced by Permission

Words & Deeds

Actions Enacted, Re-Enacted & Restored

From Late-Antique Theater to the Legacy of Otto Ege
by way of, inter alia, Saint-Denis and Gutenberg

A Symposium of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Friday & Saturday, 25–26 March 2016
106 McCormick Hall
Princeton University

Three Leaves from a Latin Religious Pocket Handbook

February 1, 2016 in Manuscript Studies

3 Leaves from a Latin Religious Handbook
in Small-Format

[First published on 1 February 2016, with updates.]

Continuing our series of Manuscript Studies (now with a Contents List), Mildred Budny reports on a set of 3 non-continuous leaves from a dismembered pocket-sized Latin religious handbook, purchased online and now in a private collection. Written in Gothic rotunda script with simple bichrome embellishments, the leaves came from a bound volume of unknown origin and provenance.

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Tags: Eadmer of Canterbury, Liturgical Handbook, Medieval Manuscript Fragments, Psalms, Tractatus de Conceptione Mariae
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Archives

Featured Posts

2016 Congress Report

51st International Congress on Medieval Studies

12–15 May 2016

Report

Marginalia in Books for 2016 M-MLA

Border States:
Marginalia in North American Manuscripts and Printed Books

Two Panels
Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
and Organized by Justin Hastings
(Department of English, Loyola University Chicago)

at the Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M-MLA)
to be held on 10-13 November 2016 at St. Louis, Missouri

Spoonful of Sugar

A Reused Medieval Bifolium from a
Latin Treatise on Medicinal Substances

Double columns of 57 lines
with rubricated headings
and
initials and paraph marks
rendered in alternately red or blue pigment
and embellished with extended penline-flourishes in the contrasting pigment

Written in the Stars

Breviary Fragment with Latin Lections on Astrology
from Sermons by Patristic Authors,
plus a Prayer

Part-Leaf from a Large-Format Lectionary

Parts of I Maccabees 10 and
Homily 38 on the Gospels by Gregory the Great

Fragmentary leaf probably from a large-format Lectionary
Parts of I Maccabees 10 and
Homily XXXVIII on the Gospels by Gregory the Great
Reduced to the lower part of the former leaf
for reuse as a wrapper or binder for unknown materials

A Leaf from the Office of the Dead

A Part of the Office of the Dead

A single leaf, trimmed down in spoliation
to produce a decorated tidbit on its own
Circa 135 mm × 100 mm
< written area circa 66 × 50 mm >
Single column of 17 lines

Text and Layout

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

Marginalia in Manuscripts and Books in North America

Border States:
Marginalia in North American Manuscripts and Printed Books

Call for Papers

Two Panels
Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
and Organized by Justin Hastings
(Department of English, Loyola University College, Chicago)

at the Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M-MLA)
to be held on 10-13 November 2016 at St. Louis, Missouri

I. Between Text and Page: Marginalia in Medieval Manuscripts

II. Between Manuscript Page and Printed Page — And Back Again

2016 Symposium on ‘Words & Deeds’

Words & Deeds

Actions Enacted, Re-Enacted & Restored

A Symposium of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Friday & Saturday, 25–26 March 2016
106 McCormick Hall
Princeton University

Sponsors

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
The Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University
The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University
James Marrow & Emily Rose
Barbara A. Shailor
The Samuel H. Kress Foundation
The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies

Three Leaves from a Latin Religious Pocket Handbook

3 Leaves from a Latin Religious Handbook
in Small-Format

Archives

Featured Posts

51st International Congress on Medieval Studies

12–15 May 2016

Report

Border States: Marginalia in North American Manuscripts and Printed Books

Two Panels Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and Organized by Justin Hastings (Department of English, Loyola University Chicago)

at the Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M-MLA) to be held on 10-13 November 2016 at St. Louis, Missouri

A Reused Medieval Bifolium from a Latin Treatise on Medicinal Substances

Double columns of 57 lines with rubricated headings and initials and paraph marks rendered in alternately red or blue pigment and embellished with extended penline-flourishes in the contrasting pigment

Breviary Fragment with Latin Lections on Astrology from Sermons by Patristic Authors, plus a Prayer

Parts of I Maccabees 10 and Homily 38 on the Gospels by Gregory the Great

Fragmentary leaf probably from a large-format Lectionary Parts of I Maccabees 10 and Homily XXXVIII on the Gospels by Gregory the Great Reduced to the lower part of the former leaf for reuse as a wrapper or binder for unknown materials

A Part of the Office of the Dead

A single leaf, trimmed down in spoliation to produce a decorated tidbit on its own Circa 135 mm × 100 mm < written area circa 66 × 50 mm > Single column of 17 lines

Text and Layout

Part of a Leaf from the Saint’s ‘First’ Life in a Lectionary Reused as Binding Material

Border States: Marginalia in North American Manuscripts and Printed Books

Call for Papers

Two Panels Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and Organized by Justin Hastings (Department of English, Loyola University College, Chicago)

at the Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M-MLA) to be held on 10-13 November 2016 at St. Louis, Missouri

I. Between Text and Page: Marginalia in Medieval Manuscripts

II. Between Manuscript Page and Printed Page — And Back Again

Words & Deeds

Actions Enacted, Re-Enacted & Restored

A Symposium of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Friday & Saturday, 25–26 March 2016 106 McCormick Hall Princeton University

Sponsors

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence The Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University James Marrow & Emily Rose Barbara A. Shailor The Samuel H. Kress Foundation The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies

3 Leaves from a Latin Religious Handbook in Small-Format

Border States:
Marginalia in North American Manuscripts and Printed Books

Two Panels
Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
and Organized by Justin Hastings
(Department of English, Loyola University Chicago)

at the Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M-MLA)
to be held on 10-13 November 2016 at St. Louis, Missouri

A Reused Medieval Bifolium from a
Latin Treatise on Medicinal Substances

Double columns of 57 lines
with rubricated headings
and
initials and paraph marks
rendered in alternately red or blue pigment
and embellished with extended penline-flourishes in the contrasting pigment

Breviary Fragment with Latin Lections on Astrology
from Sermons by Patristic Authors,
plus a Prayer

Parts of I Maccabees 10 and
Homily 38 on the Gospels by Gregory the Great

Fragmentary leaf probably from a large-format Lectionary
Parts of I Maccabees 10 and
Homily XXXVIII on the Gospels by Gregory the Great
Reduced to the lower part of the former leaf
for reuse as a wrapper or binder for unknown materials

A single leaf, trimmed down in spoliation
to produce a decorated tidbit on its own
Circa 135 mm × 100 mm
< written area circa 66 × 50 mm >
Single column of 17 lines

Part of a Leaf from the Saint’s ‘First’ Life
in a Lectionary
Reused as Binding Material

Border States:
Marginalia in North American Manuscripts and Printed Books

Two Panels
Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
and Organized by Justin Hastings
(Department of English, Loyola University College, Chicago)

at the Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M-MLA)
to be held on 10-13 November 2016 at St. Louis, Missouri

Friday & Saturday, 25–26 March 2016
106 McCormick Hall
Princeton University

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
The Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University
The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University
James Marrow & Emily Rose
Barbara A. Shailor
The Samuel H. Kress Foundation
The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies

3 Leaves from a Latin Religious Handbook
in Small-Format