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    • International Congress on Medieval Studies
      • Abstracts of Congress Papers
        • Abstracts of Papers Listed by Author
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  • About
    • Mission
    • Who We Are
      • Officers, Associates & Volunteers
      • RGME Committees
      • Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
    • Policies & Statements
      • RGME Privacy Policy Statement
      • RGME Intellectual Property Statement & Agreements
    • People
      • Mildred Budny — Her Page
      • Adelaide Bennett Hagens
    • Activities
      • Events
      • Congress Activities
        • Sponsored Conference Sessions (1993‒)
          • Panels at the M-MLA Convention (from 2016)
        • Co-sponsored Conference Sessions (2006‒)
    • History
      • Seals, Matrices & Documents
      • Genealogies & Archives
    • Contact Us
  • Bembino
    • Multi-Lingual Bembino
  • Congress
    • Sponsored Conference Sessions (1993‒)
    • Co-sponsored Conference Sessions (2006‒)
    • Abstracts of Congress Papers
      • Abstracts Listed by Author
      • Abstracts Listed by Year
    • Kalamazoo Archive
    • Panels at the M-MLA Convention (2016-2019)
      • Abstracts of Papers for the M-MLA Convention
      • Panels at the M-MLA Convention (from 2016)
  • Events
    • RGME Activities for 2024 and 2025
      • 2023 Activities and 2024 Planned Activities
    • Seminars, Workshops, Colloquia & Symposia (1989–)
      • Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
      • Symposia on ‘The Transmission of the Bible’
      • The New Series (2001-)
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Program: The Roads Taken
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Registration
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Registration Open
      • RGME Symposia: The Various Series
      • The Research Group Speaks: The Series
      • Meetings of the Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
      • RGME Online Events
    • Abstracts of Papers for Events
      • Abstracts of Papers for Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
      • Abstracts of Papers for Symposia, Workshops & Colloquia
    • Receptions & Parties
    • Business Meetings
    • Photographic Exhibitions & Master Classes
    • Events Archive
  • ShelfLife
    • Journal Description
    • ShelfMarks: The RGME-Newsletter
    • Publications
      • “Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge” (1997)
        • Mildred Budny, ‘Catalogue’
        • The Illustrated Catalogue (1997)
      • The Illustrated Handlist
      • Semi-Official Counterfeiting in France 1380-1422
      • No Snap Decisions: Challenges of Manuscript Photography
    • History and Design of Our Website
  • Galleries
    • Watermarks & the History of Paper
    • Galleries: Contents List
    • Scripts on Parade
    • Texts on Parade
      • Latin Documents & Cartularies
      • New Testament Leaves in Old Armenian
    • Posters on Display
    • Layout Designs
  • Donations and Contributions
    • RGME Donor Promise
    • 2023 End-of-Year Fundraiser for our 2024 Anniversary Year
    • 2019 Anniversary Appeal
    • Orders
  • Links
    • Catalogs, Metadata, and Databases: A Handlist of Links
    • Handlist of Resources for Manuscript Studies and Fragmentology
    • Manuscripts & Rare Books
    • Maps, Plans & Drawings
    • Seals, Seal-Matrices & Documents

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2025 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: RGME Program
Episode 21. “Learning How to Look”
A “Beatus Manuscripts” Project
2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program
2025 RGME Visit to Vassar College
Two Leaves in the Book of Numbers from the Chudleigh Bible
Delibovi on Glassgold on Boethius: A Blogpost
Ronald Smeltzer on “Émilie du Châtelet, Woman of Science”
A Latin Kalendar Leaf for February from Northern France
2025 Spring Symposium: “Makers, Producers, and Collectors of Books”
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The Weber Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible
Workshop 4. “Manuscript Fragments Compared”
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2025 Annual Appeal
Favorite Recipes for Lemonade, Etc.
RGME Visit to the Lomazow Collection: Report
2024 Autumn Symposium: “At the Helm”
Medieval Women’s Networks
A Latin Vulgate Leaf of the Book of Numbers
The RGME ‘Lending Library’
Florence, Italy, Ponte Vecchio from Ponte alle Grazie. Photo: Ingo Mehling, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Episode 17. “RGME Retrospect and Prospects: Anniversary Reflections”
2024 Anniversary Symposium: The Booklet
2024 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: Program
Jesse Hurlbut at the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah. Photograph Jesse Hurlbut.
Episode 16: An Interview with Jesse D. Hurlbut
To Whom Do Manuscripts Belong?
Kalamazoo, MI Western Michigan University, Valley III from the side. Photograph: David W. Sorenson.
2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report
2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College
Puente de San Martín: Bridge with reflection over the River Targus, Toledo, Spain.
2024 Grant for “Between Past and Future” Project from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Research Libraries Program
2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut: Program

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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 has two manuscript images at the center, with the RGME logo at top left and the Vassar College logo at top right.

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.

  • 2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College
  • 2024 Autumn Symposium “At the Helm”

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:

  • RGME Visit to the Collection of Steven M. Lomazow, M.D.
  • RGME Visit to the Lomazow Collection: 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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2025 RGME Visit to Vassar College

March 2, 2025 in Uncategorized

2025 RGME Visit
to Vassar College

Medieval & Renaissance
Manuscripts & Cuttings
at
The Archives & Special Collections Library
and
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

Sunday 4 May 2025
4:00 – 6:00 pm
and
Monday 5 May 2025
11:00 am – 4:30 pm
In person and Online by Zoom

Approach to Main Library, Vassar College. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

[Posted on 1 March 2025, with updates]

Inspired by the 2024 RGME Spring Symposium at Vassar College, we return in May for a visit to its collections.

This time, we will see some of its Medieval & Renaissance manuscripts, fragments, and cuttings. These manuscript materials at Vassar are held in the

  • Archives & Special Collections Library
    and
  • Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

We will visit both, with lunch in between. An RGME Roundtable discussion will follow the afternoon visit.

In addition, at each location, undergraduate students or a new member of the faculty for the Art Department will speak about their work on some of the manuscript materials. They will present new discoveries, with the chance to see the original materials themselves.

Save-the-Date Poster for 2024 RGME Spring Symposium at Vassar College. Poster set in RGME Bembino.

Prequel:
Our 2024 Spring Symposium

Some of these materials were considered in presentations at the 2024 Spring Symposium; some were displayed at the special exhibition, where we could see them on view. See:

  • Books of the Middle Ages and and Renaissance (April 19–June 23, 2024)

At the first Reception of the Symposium, Vassar undergraduate students described their work on several of them to prepare for this exhibition.

Coinciding with the Symposium was the publication of the new catalogue of these materials.

  • Catalogue of Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts at Vassar College, Including the Nicholas B. Scheetz Collection and the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, compiled by Peter Kidd (Vassar College, 2024)
    ISBN 9798218363758

2025 RGME Visit to Vassar

Our 2025 RGME In-Person/Hybrid Visit will take place on Monday 5 May. There will be a preliminary session on Sunday 4 May.

We invite you to attend either:

  • in person (places are limited due to space) or
  • online.

The RGME will provide online and interactive access by Zoom, to allow a wider audience to join us for an interactive Zoom Meeting.

For Registration information, see below.

A Centerpoint for the RGME’s 2025 Activities

The plan for this visit connects with the RGME theme of collectors and collecting for our events this year, and also for our work on manuscript fragments.

For the various events, held online and in various locations as in-person/hybrid events, see:

  • RGME 2024 and 2025 Activities
  • 2025 Spring and Autumn Symposia: “Agents and Agencies”

Spring (Part 1 of 2)
“Makers, Producers, and Collectors of Books:
From Author/Artist/Artisan to Library” (28–30 March online)

Autumn (Part 2 of 2)
“Readers, Fakers, and Re-Creators of Books:
From Page to Marketplace and Beyond” (17–19 October online or hybrid)

  • 2025 Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo. (21–23 November hybrid)
    “Break-Up Books and Make-Up Books:
    Encountering and Reconstructing the Legacy
    of Otto F. Ege and Other Biblioclasts”

Plan/Program

Overview

Sunday 4 May

  • The afternoon before the full day’s visit, a preliminary session (hybrid) at 4:00–5:30 pm EDT offers the chance to gather at the Murphy Room of the Art Library for Martha Frish’s presentation on “The Symbols of Vassar Architecture”. This presentation gives an update from her Post-Symposium Presentation last year. (See 2024 Spring Symposium.)
  • For the location of the Murphy Room, see Maps and Call Numbers, Art Library

Monday 5 May

  • In the morning we will visit the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (on its closed day), to see some of its manuscripts and manuscript cuttings.
  • Lunch will be held in its Sculpture Garden (or inside in case of inclement weather).
  • After lunch, we will visit the Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library (Main Library), to see some of its manuscript materials held in the Archives & Special Collections Library.
  • Then we will move to the Seminar Room in Special Collections to hold a Roundtable discussion. We may continue conversation about the materials, compare notes, and reflect on the day.
  • For drinks and dinner, we would go to a local restaurant, for repasts at our own expense.
Speakers include:
John P. Murphy
Ronald D. Patkus
Rachel Wise
Benjamin Garrity (Vassar Class of 2027)
Tara Peterson (Vassar Class of 2025)
Both John P. Murphy and Ronald D. Patkus will speak about the materials in the Art Center.

Rachel Wise, Professor of Art, will speak about her study of one of the most important manuscripts in its collection.

Ronald Patkus will speak about provenance for materials in both the Art Center and Special Collections.

Two Vassar students will speak about the art of materials in Special Collections:

Benjamin Garrity (Class of ’27) will speak about the Loeb Book of Hours.
Tara Peterson (Class of ’25) will speak about the Spanish Forger.

The showcased items in the two collections comprise: an album of collected initials; selected Books of Hours; and a leaf illustrated in medieval style by the prolific and renowned Spanish Forger. On hand, by request, at the session on Special Collections, might be its leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, a dismembered manuscript being researched by the RGME because of a current loan. (See below.)

Program

1. Sunday 4 May

Afternoon: 4:00–5:30 pm EDT (GMT-4)

The hybrid RGME Visit opens with a presentation by Martha Frish on Sunday afternoon, when she will speak about
“Some Symbols in the Architecture at Vassar College.” Her illustrated presentation will highlight features of the campus which distinguish it from many American colleges. By examining many of the buildings in their architectural settings, both in their landscape and in their historical periods, demonstrates the ways in which Vassar represents a physical documentation of the architectural history of the United States.
As an introduction to the RGME Visit to the College all day on Monday 5 May, this ‘tour’ sets the scene by locating the visit within the physical space of the collections at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center and Special Collections of the Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library. Martha’s invitation to examine the buildings and their own settings offers a companion to the ways in which readers, students, and beholders would at the manuscript sources in these collections, in order to discover more of their meanings and stories of their own.

This special presentation will take place in person in the

  • Murphy Room, Art Library

To register for this portion of the Visit, please use these links:

1) In Person:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sunday-in-person-for-2025-rgme-vassar-visit-symbols-of-vassar-architecture-tickets-1347124799539

2) Online:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sunday-online-2025-rgme-vassar-visit-symbols-of-vassar-architecture-tickets-1348928243689

"The Quad as Exterior Room". Photograph of the Residential Quad by Martha Frish (2016).

“The Quad as Exterior Room”. Photograph of the Residential Quad by Martha Frish (2016).

2. Monday 5 May

Morning
10:30–11:30
Art Center, Seminar Room

We would meet by 10:30 am in the Entrance Lobby of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center . Note that the Art Center is otherwise closed on Mondays.

Our visit allows us to see some of its manuscripts and manuscript cuttings. They include materials not normally on show.

Both John P. Murphy and Ronald D. Patkus will speak about the materials. Rachel Wise, Professor of Art, will speak about her study of one of the most important manuscripts in the collection.

They will demonstrate 1) an album of cuttings of choice portions from manuscripts (such as illuminated initials) and 2) a Book of Hours. These monuments are:

1.  Album of Cuttings, 15th century (Loeb 864.2.242-864.2.258)
Seventeen cuttings with illuminated initials, removed from an Alphabetical Index (so far unidentified). Germany, 15th century.

Other contents include drawings of architectural features, copies of paintings, and copies of manuscript illuminations and marginalia from medieval manuscripts now in Oxford, London, and Salisbury Cathedral. Some of those manuscripts have been the subjects of RGME seminars.

Catalogue, pp. 246–249 (with plate on p. 246)
See also  Object: Manuscript
John Murphy will speak about the initials, Ronald Patkus about provenance, and then we will have discussion.

2.  Book of Hours, 15th century (Loeb 1994.2.2)

Book of Hours of Jean Olivier, Bishop of Angers (bishop from 1532–1540), for the Use of Rome, in Latin and French. France: Paris? Circa 1510–1540 or 1510–1520.

Artist: Jean Pichore (French, active c. 1501–1520)
Catalogue, pp. 266–269 (with plate on p. 267)
See also The Melun-Epinoy Hours

Rachel Wise, Professor of Art, will speak about the art of the manuscript, Ronald Patkus about provenance, and then we will have discussion.

The Melun-Épinoy Hours, opened to Annunciation scene. c. 1501–1520. Image: Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College

12:00–1:00 pm
Lunch

Lunch will take place in the outdoor Sculpture Garden.  In case of inclement weather, we will go inside.

Afternoon

After lunch we will move to the Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library (Main Library).

The first afternoon session, showcasing materials in Special Collections, will take place in the Class of 1951 Reading Room.

The second afternoon session, featuring a RGME Roundtable discussion, will take place in the Seminar Room of Special Collections (which closes at 4:30 pm).

1:00–2:00 pm
Spotlight on Special Collections

Class of 1951 Reading Room

Selected materials from Special Collections will be available for examination and discussion.

Ronald D. Patkus will speak about the materials. Students of both Ronald and Rachel Wise will speak about their work 1) on a leaf by The Spanish Forger, a notorious and prolific producer active in the late-nineteenth and/or early twentieth century, probably in Paris; and 2) on the Loeb Book of Hours.

3.  Leaf 42, 14th and 19th/20th centuries
Single leaf as a cutting, reused.
Text on one side from an Antiphonary.  Italy, 14th century
Painted image on the other.  The image depicts an encounter outside a walled city between a solder and a lady, each with retinue. France, late 19th or early 20th century.
Artist: The Spanish Forger. (Active France, late 19th or early 20th century)
Catalogue, pp. 107–109 (with plate on p. 108)
4. Book of Hours, 15th century (MS. 6)
Book of Hours for the Use of Paris, in Latin and French
Catalogue, pp. 21–14 (with plate on p. 13)
Students will speak about their work on these materials; Ronald Patkus will speak about the provenance; and there will be scope for discussion.

2:00–2:30 pm
Break

3:30–4:00 pm
RGME Roundtable
“Looking at Manuscripts and Collections”

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Vulgate Bible Leaf, Recto. Photography by Mildred Budny.

This occasion offers the opportunity to share reflections about the materials demonstrated on our visit to both the Art Center and Main Library. Several of us might describe our research on some of them or relatives to them. We would consider their bearing on subjects which the RGME considers this year in its variety of events and projects.

1. Manuscript Fragments:
Challenges and Opportunities for Research

For example, recently the RGME has been examining the Farrell Leaf and the Weber Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, dismembered directly after sale in 1964 and widely distributed thereafter frequently through sale rooms. The original manuscript, a single-volume Latin Vulgate Bible, was produced in France, probably Paris, circa 1330-1340. See our Workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.”

A leaf from the same book belongs to Vassar College. It is part of the Nicholas B. Scheetz Collection of Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts (Scheetz MS 27). About this leaf, see the entry in the recent catalogue:

  • Catalogue of Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts at Vassar College, compiled by Peter Kidd (Vassar College, 2024), p. 217.

It could be useful to compare notes about these relatives which formerly stood within the same covers of a single-volume Latin Vulgate Bible. Whereas many leaves known from the original manuscript in a variety of collections belong to the Old and New Testament portions of the Bible, the Vassar leaf from the Scheetz Collection belongs to part of the textual apparatus of the Interpretation of Hebrew Names in glossary form, arranged alphabetically, and specifically from within the section for terms beginning with the letter B.

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

2. Provenance: A Perennial Quest

Other subjects under consideration this year by the RGME fall into the sphere of the Visit to Vassar’s collections. Among them are issues of provenance for the objects, whether known, detectable, or unknown. Such issues can form an important part of the history of their transmission and, perhaps, of legitimacy, as in the case of forgeries.

Our roundtable might mention various points of contact between the visit and our other events for this year, which have led to the selection of objects to examine. The Vassar Visit stands poised between them:

  • our Spring and Autumn Symposia which explore aspects of “Agents and Agencies” in the realms of books
    2025 Spring and Autumn Symposia
  • our sessions on “Manuscripts at Worlds of Knowledge” at the 2025 International Medieval Congress at Leeds
    2025 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: RGME Program
  • our Autumn Colloquium on “Break-Up Books and Make-Up Books: Encountering and Reconstructing the Legacy of Otto F. Ege and Other Biblioclasts”
    2025 RGME Autumn Colloquium at the University of Waterloo

The design of the Visit, selected by Ronald Patkus and John Murphey, responds thoughtfully and expertly to these shared interests for collective exploration in 2025.

Reception

A Reception will close the day’s visit.

Celebratory Reception
5:00–7:30 pm EDT
Class of 1951 Reading Room

We celebrate the visit, the sharing of expertise and experiences in studying the original sources at Vassar, and the generosity of the curators, donors, contributors, organizers, hosts, and student interns. We invite you to join us.

Dinner

Afterward, we would go to a local restaurant for drinks and/or dinner (at our own expense). There, we could continue conversation in the company of people interested in books, their care, their study, their ability to teach, their stories, and their delight.

Information for Visiting Vassar

For information on travel, directions, campus maps, accommodation, dining, and other features in the area, see:

  • Visit Vassar

A photo of the Thompson Library at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, taken by me [Noteremote] on November 2, 2007. via Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thompson_Library_(Vassar_College).jpg.

Registration

You can register for the RGME Vassar Visit through the RGME Eventbrite Portal. See:

  • RGME Eventbrite Collection

There you will be able to register to attend either in person or online.

We encourage you to make a Voluntary Donation when you register. It will help to support our small nonprofit educational organization powered principally by volunteers.

1. Sunday 4 May 2025

To register for the preliminary presentation on Sunday afternoon, please use these links:

1) In Person:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sunday-in-person-for-2025-rgme-vassar-visit-symbols-of-vassar-architecture-tickets-1347124799539

2) Online:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sunday-online-2025-rgme-vassar-visit-symbols-of-vassar-architecture-tickets-1348928243689

2. Monday 5 May 2025

To register for the Visit to the Art Center and the Main Library on Monday 5 May, please use these links:

1) In-Person Visit

For in-person attendance, space is limited. In registering for in-person attendance, for the catering you will be given the opportunity to indicate any dietary requirements.

2025 RGME Visit to Vassar College IN PERSON

2) Online Visit

For online attendance, once you register, the Zoom Link will be sent to you shortly before the event.

2025 RGME Visit to Vassar College ONLINE

Thank you for your interest and support. We look forward to welcoming you.

*****

Thanks

For arranging this visit, we thank:

  • Ronald D. Patkus, Head of Special Collections and College Historian, Adjunct Associate Professor of History on the Frederick Weyerhaeuser Chair
  • John P. Murphy, Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

We thank the speakers for their contributions to share their work on manuscript materials at Vassar College: Rachel Wise, Ronald Patkus, John Murphy, and Vassar students Ben Gerrity and Tara Peterson. Thanks go to Thomas E. Hill, Art Librarian, for arranging the visit to the Murphy Room, to Francine Brown of the Art Center, and Amanda Burdine. Thanks go to the 2025 RGME Visit Student Interns for help behind the scenes: Betsy Subiros (Class of 2025), Anna Gilsdorf, and Rachel Stanger (Class of 2027).

We give thanks to the staff and others at Vassar College for this visit.

We look forward to the visit. You are invited to join, whether in person or virtually.

*****

Questions or Suggestions?

Please let us know.

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  • Donations and Contributions
  • 2025 Annual Appeal

We look forward to seeing you and welcoming you to our events.

*****

Tags: Archives & Special Collections of Vassar College, Books of Hours, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Manuscript Cuttings, manuscript fragments, Manuscript studies, RGME Visits to Collections, The Spanish Forger, Vassar College, Virtual Visits to Collections
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2024 Spring Symposium at Vassar College

October 16, 2023 in Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Manuscript Studies, Reception, RGME Symposia, Uncategorized

2024 RGME Spring Symposium
at Vassar College

Vassar College: Current Seal.

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

Friday to Sunday, 18 to 21 April 2024

(hybrid, with both in-person events
and online participation by Zoom)

Celebrating the Acquisition of the
Nicholas B. Scheetz Collection
of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts

[Posted on 16 October 2023, with updates]

Update 15 April 2024:  Now see the updated Program (below).
Update 16 April:  For registrations, now see Late Registrations (below)

2024 RGME Spring Symposium at Vassar College:
“Between Past and Future:
Building Bridges
between Special Collections and Teaching for the Liberal Arts”
Friday to Sunday, 19 to 21 April 2024
https://library.vassar.edu/…/2024-RGME-Spring-Symposium…
(hybrid, with both in-person events and online participation by Zoom)

*****

For 2024, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence celebrates an anniversary. Our Theme for the Year is “Bridges”. See “Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year.

Vassar College, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, “The Open Missal”. Ludger tom Ring the Younger, circa 1570.

Among our celebrations, the RGME continues with its Symposium Series. With a Spring Symposium at Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York, the RGME Symposia return to an in-person event, this time as a hybrid event also with online participation.

In 2023, the RGME began to return to in-person events with its activities at the partly-hybrid 58th International Congress on Medieval Studies. This step came after the cancellation of the Congress in 2020 and an online Congress in both 2021 and 2022. For 2024, our Symposia join this return, with the invitation to hold our Spring Symposium at Vassar College.

For some of our Symposia, whether in-person at Princeton University in 2019 (and intended there in 2020), or online by Zoom in 2022, 2023, and 2024, our RGME Associates at Vassar have given presentations about their work, the Library, and Special Collections. See, for example,

  • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Report: The Roads Taken
  • 2022 Spring and Autumn Symposia
  • 2023 Spring and Autumn Symposia
  • 2023 Autumn Symposium “Between Earth and Sky”
  • 2023 Spring Symposium “From the Ground Up”
  • 2024 Anniversary Symposium in Thanks to Jesse Hurlbut

Now we visit Vassar to join the celebrations for a new catalogue and exhibition of Medieval and Renaissance Books in the collection. We do so by gathering scholars, librarians, curators, cataloguers, collectors, vendors, teachers, and others to participate in an RGME Symposium which showcases the materials in the light of expertise and appreciation dedicated to them.

The choice of the Program and other components of the Symposium is guided by the Vassar/RGME Symposium Advisory Committee, and by other advisers both at Vassar and elsewhere. The Advisory Committee comprises

  • Ronald Patkus,
  • Elizabeth Lastra,
  • Mildred Budny, and
  • Barbara Williams Ellertson.

Note on the Image

Poughkeepsie, New York, Vassar College, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. The Open Missal (circa 1570) attributed to Ludger tom Ring the Younger (1522-1582). Image via “The Open Missal”.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Early Printed Books, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library, History of Bridges, Les Enluminures, Manuscript studies, Manuscripts & Early Printed Books, Nicholas B. Scheetz Collection, RGME Anniversary Year, RGME Symposia, Symbols in Vassar Architecture, Vassar College, Vassar College Library, Vassar College Special Collections and Archives
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A 13th-Century Pocket Vulgate Bible at Smith College

August 13, 2023 in Manuscript Studies

A Thirteenth-Century Pocket Vulgate Bible
at Smith College:
“The Dimock Bible”
(Mortimer Rare Book Collection MS 240)

 Hannah Goeselt
RGME Guestblogger

[Posted on 30 October 2023]

Note:  For this Blogpost, we welcome Guest Blogger, Hannah Goeselt, who reports on a manuscript which first caught her attention when examining manuscripts at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, as part of her undergraduate studies.  Now, having recently finished an MS at Simmons University in Library and Information Science (Cultural Heritage Informatics), she offers a guided tour to this book deserving wider attention and further research.  We thank her for her contribution and invite you to join this guided tour.

As part of the tour, Hannah showcases the manuscript for its interest in its own right, and also, as she says, “to use it as an example of how one might go about using some of the online research tools out there to assist in manuscript studies”.  Accordingly, she includes “everything from the De Ricci census, Conway–Davis directory, Schoenberg database, and Digital Scriptorium (with Smith’s own consortium database)”, as well as the Grolier Club, “which played an important part in assessing the content of the auction catalogs mentioned in Schoenberg”. Brava!

Over to you, Hannah . . .

Our Guest Manuscript:
Mortimer Rare Book Collection MS 240

Smith College, MRBC MS 240, fol. 191v. Historiated initial for the Pauline Epistle to the Ephesians, with outward-looking male face. Photography by Hannah Goeselt.

While taking survey of material pertaining to manuscripts from Otto F. Ege (1888–1951) in collections across the campus of Smith College, I was drawn to this thirteenth-century Pocket Bible, with the pressmark “MRBC MS 240″, and thought it’d be worth initiating a sort of “meet-and-greet” with this codex. I have a fondness for 13th-century Latin Vulgate Bibles, often noted for their similarities and their contribution to forming our current concept of the Bible’s format.  And yet within all that seemingly mass uniformity, on second glance they all contain their own unique qualities and histories.

At the Mortimer Rare Book Collection (MRBC) at Neilson Library, several jewels of medieval manuscripts among keep this book company, alongside a host of fragments.  Notable examples are

  1. a large-scale Vulgate Bible written in a single column layout,
  2. a lovely mid-thirteenth-century French Psalter with early-modern devotional marginalia,
  3. a Book of Hours associated with Philip the Good, Duke Philip III of Burgundy (1306—1467, duke from 1419).

All three of these have featured on posts in Peter Kidd’s blog on Medieval Manuscripts Provenance:

  1. “A 13th-Century Bible from Beauvais at Smith College”
    https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-13th-century-bible-from-beauvais-at.html
  2. “A French 13th-Century Psalter at Smith College”
    https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-french-13th-century-psalter-at-smith.html
  3. “An Unrecognised Book of Hours Made for Philip the Good [Part I]”
    https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2015/12/an-unrecognised-book-of-hours-made-for.html

They, along with many others, are available on the Digital Scriptorium website.  However more recently the collections have also been added to the Five College Compass website, where MS 240 has joined them with a full digitization:

  • https://compass.fivecolleges.edu/object/smith:1365930 (apart from its folio 1r, which I show here).

For users of the Smith College Libraries database (Students, Faculty, Staff, Community Borrowers), this is internal Permalink for the manuscript.

Let us, for the duration of this post, call it the Dimock Bible, as referred to in the Directory of Collections in the United States and Canada with Pre-1600 Manuscript Holdings (pages 52 and 62) by Melissa Conway and Lisa Fagin Davis, and due to the family name associated with its recent ownership. Within the library record, we see that the cataloger of this manuscript has done wonderful work in linking the manuscript to two very important sources that will help us in our search for more information.

Upon opening, we are met by the first page of the Bible text, which opens the preface to the bible unit itself by its translator Jerome (circa 342–347 – 420), who produced the Latin Vulgate Version. This image is omitted in the digital facsimile, though one can see a painted offset on the verso of the preceding leaf.

First page of the Dimock Bible, with two columns of text which begin the preface "Frater Ambrosius" describing the Latin translation/

Smith College, MRBC MS 240, fol. 1r. Opening of Jerome’s preface ‘Frater Ambrosius’ for the bible unit. Photograph by Hannah Goeselt.

“The Dimock Bible”:
From George Edward Dimock, Father and Son,
to Smith C
ollege

Looking at the metadata, we can see the manuscript was recorded in 1937 by Seymour de Ricci (1881-1942) under Dimock in his Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, as number 1159.  Looking up the entry, we see it comes with an introduction:

The owner kindly informs us that he has inherited from his father five early manuscript items, which he lists as follows:

[1] Bible, extensively illuminated, having belonged before 1676 to Cardinal Benedetto Odescalchi, later Pope Innocent XI (1676–1689) . . . (page 1159).

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College, Mortimer Rare Book Collection, MS 240, inside front pastedown with bookplate. Image via https://compass.fivecolleges.edu/object/smith:1365930#page/2/mode/2up.

The ‘owner’ mentioned in that introduction was one George Edward Dimock (1891–1966), who taught Classics (and tennis) at the Pingry School in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he had been born and was currently living at the time of the Census.  A graduate of Yale University, he retired as instructor in 1950. His Obituary appeared as “George E. Dimock”, New York Times (January 13, 1966), page 25. His wife was Imogen Kinsey Dimock (1893–1985), Vassar College Class of 1914.

As stated in de Ricci, Dimock had inherited the manuscript along with the rest of the library belonging to his late father, also George Edward Dimock (1854-1919).  It is his bookplate we see on the front inside board over the marbled pastedown.

The elder Dimock, like many men in his family, studied at Yale University, where despite studying medicine he went on to become a stock exchange broker in 1877.  Among “Owners of Incunabula” listed by the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL), he is listed as Dimock, George Edward, with six items all now at Smith College.

In 1881 he would marry Elizabeth Jordan, an elder sister of Emily Clara Jordan Folger (1859–1936), co-founder of the Folger Shakespeare Library. For an added connection to Smith, their eldest sister, Mary Augusta Jordan (1855–1941), would teach English at Vassar before later becoming one of the formative faculty members in Smith College’s early history.

“George Edward Dimock”, Biographical Record of the Class of 1874 at Yale College, Page 65, via https://archive.org/details/biographicalreco00yalerich/page/64/mode/2up.

Of his library, the elder Dimock writes in 1910 for his class’s biography at Yale that “a great interest has always been the collecting of books, and I derive great satisfaction from the contemplation of my library, which, while not notable, contains something of interest for every book-lover.”  (“George Edward Dimock”, Biographical Record of the Class of 1874 in Yale College, Volume 4:  1874–1909 (New Haven:  Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1912), pp. 64–67, at page 67 via The Hathi Trust, or page 65. via Internet.org).

The second Dimock’s widow, Imogen Kinsey Dimock, gifted the manuscript, along with several Italian volumes and incunabula containing Bibles, Biblical literature, and other related texts, to Smith in 1968, two years after his passing.

Their son, also named George Edward Dimock (1917–2000), had followed in his father’s footsteps, by becoming a professor of Classics, first at Yale (1948–1952), then later at Smith College (1952–1986).

The Schoenberg Database and Sales Catalogues

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College, Mortimer Rare Book Collection, MS 240, front cover. Image via https://compass.fivecolleges.edu/object/smith:1365930#page/1/mode/2up.

The second link in the record takes us to the (Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts ), a wonderful tool for tracking manuscript provenance, by creating linked entries of past references to a manuscript as it moves through time and different collections. This now allows us to inquire about the appropriate sales catalog to analyze their description.

The Dimock Bible, recorded as SDBM_MS_23713, has four entries associated with it with Provenance data:

  1. SDBM_239187
  2. SBDM_237243
  3. SBDM_8899.

Two of them locate traces of its ownership before the family, the first in 1891 (lot 4) in the sale of the Library of the Late Hon. George Wood [(1828-1884)], M.L.C. [Member of the Legislative Council] of Grahams Town, Cape of Good Hope.

Biblia Latina, Manuscript on Vellum, with numerous initial letters painted in brilliant colours, red morocco extra, with arms of Cardinal Odescalchi in gold as centre ornaments on sides. [lot 4]

The entry for the manuscript (no. 142) in the catalogue for the auction in June 1903 in London by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge of the library of the late W. E. Bools, Esq. — i.e. William Edwin Bools (1837–1902) — of Enderby House, Clapham, describes it thus:

written in minute but clear gothic letters, double columns of 48 lines, by an Anglo-Norman or Northern French scribe, numerous fine painted strap and other ornamental initials and marginal decorations . . . old Italian red morocco, full gilt floreate back, line and ornamental frame sides, with arms of Card[inal]. Odescalchi afterwards Pope Innocent XI on sides.  [no. 142]

The lengthy title for Bools’s library in the catalogue and the circulation of presale advertisements focused mainly on the collection’s Shakespearean-era literature and other such prominent English writers.

The Earlier Provenance
and Likely Origin of the Manuscript

Marseille, Musée des beaux arts. Carlo Maratta (1625-1713), oil on canvas. Portrait (between 1645 and 1658) of Cardinal Alderano Cybo. Image via Wikimedia and Creative Commons 3.0.

The reference to Odescalchi, which has allowed others to trace the manuscript into the 19th century, is based on the red leather armorial binding: a cardinal’s typical wide-brimmed hat and tiered tassels over the family device.

But the identification to that family was found to be incorrect, and has since changed, upon further investigation of the device, to that of Cardinal Alderano Cybo / Cibo / Cybo-Malaspina (1613–1700; Cardinal from 1645). Belonging to member of a family from the Italian aristocracy in the region of Genoa, his arms still have a papal connection, as this individual served as Cardinal Secretary of State to Pope Innocent XI, born Benedetto Odescalchi (1611–1689).

With the mis-attribution in mind, one begins to wonder what else about these descriptions were in error. The assertion regarding the scribe as Anglo-Norman of Northern French origin assumes increased interest when we look through the manuscript, since its script and decoration, like its binding, seem much more Italian in origin than French. If you would allow me to indulge in this theory (and I welcome other potential ideas), this observation could well challenge the ways that we view and research this bible.

In the script, the hands gravitate towards a Southern textualis than its more angular, Northern sibling Gothic textualis. This preference accompanies the consistent use of tironian ‘et’ (“and”) with no crossbar, and an ad-hoc approach to whether its chapters for biblical books are set in the margins or within the text-block. We will return to details about the chapters in a moment.

From an aesthetic standpoint though, it is the decorated initials that have the softer edges and palette I’ve come to associate with Italian production. One might compare its initials with these examples:

  • Genesis in MS 6 of the University of Edinburgh, MS 6 (such as folios 148v–149r)
  • the Morgan’s MS M.178: New York, Morgan Library, MS M.178, such as folio f.147v

The Decorated and Animated Initials

While technically the book is not “illuminated” or even “historiated”, with illustrations of figural scenes as such, it does indeed have initials painted in brilliant color:  vibrant blues, greens, shades of red-orange and pink-purple, all accented in white penwork. The letters terminate in simple foliate designs as well as human body parts, the initials as likely to sprout multi-colored leaves as an arm, bare foot, or figure’s face. This is fairly consistent throughout the save four examples.

There are two zoomorphic initials made up of the twisted limbs of fearsome dragons made to resemble their opening letter.  The more impressive of the two marks the beginning of the Book of Proverbs. Within its border, this creature adopts the form of the letter P (for Parabole), as it curls its long neck to bite its own leg, while raising its offside leg and offside wing.  The spread tail-feathers almost resemble rays of light beaming behind the beast.

Smith College, MRBC MS 240, fol. 25v. Proverbs Initial with Dragon. Photography by Hannah Goeselt.

Two more inhabited initials feature respectively another dragon hanging by its neck to form the tail of the ‘Q’ opening I John (“Quod fuit ab initio . . . “), and a full figure of what I can only assume is the prophet Jeremiah himself standing within the initial V of his Book starting “verba hieremi[a]e filii elchi[a]e . . . ”.   When seen directly in person, the initial is quite small, but in enlarged photographs or under magnification we can see a bespeckled and bearded elder leaning on a walking stick and contemplating an object — flower, scroll, or roll? — which he holds in his hand.

The painted Initial letter U encloses a standing figure of a standing male saint with a halo.

Smith College, MRBC MS 240, fol. 69v. Jeremiah Initial.

The Production of Portable Vulgate Bibles

The distinction between French and Italian features is important because, with a new region or locale in mind, the context of some smaller details pertaining to the manuscript’s usage become of interest.

Portable Vulgate Bibles produced in Italy during the thirteenth century were heavily influenced by the Paris Bible system, developed in the sphere of the university.  The system included a certain ordering of Biblical Books, contained within a single volume, a diminished size for the book and script, the omission of some features, such as the capitula (or chapter) lists, their replacement with the full use of Jerome’s prologues, and an integration of the glossary of Interpretationes nominum Hebraeorum (“Interpretations of Hebrew Words”).  More importantly, the Paris Bible adopted a chapter system and numbering that has persisted into the present day.

In this context, as the term has sometimes been expressed too loosely, I am taking note of a specific grouping of thirteenth- century bibles defined by Laura Light[1] that proliferated after 1230 and into most of the rest of the century. Not all Bibles of the thirteenth century are Paris Bibles; not even all those made in France are Paris Bibles (though a good half of them certainly are), and vice versa.  Not all Paris Bibles were made in Paris or, for that matter, in France.

As more research on the development and production of thirteenth-century Bibles might reveal all the variations between what, at a cursory glance, may seem a more-or-less consistent genre, we can start to see how manuscripts made further away from locales under the influence of Paris Bibles made do with whatever exemplars were at hand, and  are therefore given to greater deviation from the ideal laid out by Neil Ker (1908–1982).  These thoughts were greatly improved by observations by Laura Light about such research results, as she described in the 2023 Autumn Symposium.

In an article on the subject of Italian vernacular Bibles[2], Sabina Magrini observes that certain owners, like Italian friars, were accustomed to working with the Paris Bible, and if the text did not match expectations, then a re-adaptation of the manuscript might occur. We see this personalization paralleled throughout the text of the Dimock Bible, where signs of consistent revision to chapter numerals, either erased or added to, are made by a former owner.

Marks of and for Consultation

Following on that thought, it was these manuscripts made outside of the Paris Bible’s influence (namely Bologna), or at least partially outside it (as its ordering of books seems to follow the Paris sequence), that would often draw on older or alternative systems of numbering chapters. It was thus up to the reader to bring it into alignment with the modern system.  We see frequent evidence of this practice throughout the book, with an ‘I’ added to the end of a numeral, partial or wholly rubbed out chapter numbers, or simply an amended version placed in the margins.

Divisions mostly occur at the same placement as new system, and most +alterations are only off the standard by several numbers, as noted in this page from Proverbs, where a reader has used + erasure and a black ink to change the +roman numerals to 20, 21, and 22  +(XX, XXI, and XXII) from an initial state which seems to have been marked as 17, 18, and 19 (XVII, XVIII, XIX).

While we are on this page I hope you will also admire, in the bottom margin, the red pen drawing of what looks like a crane or egret, holding in its bill a little leaf which descends from the foliate tip of the initial M in the last line.

Smith College, MRBC MS 240, fol. 29v. Egret in the margin. Image via smith_1365997_JP2_37a4896918dcf45f89c0d5adcb45b9a88c9745ff6826edaa76f294e7cd4f24b6.

This Bible does not contain the Interpretationes, not even as a consequence of more missing sections, which it certainly did acquire. The major loss of sections is not noted in any of its auction descriptions, though this omission might be inferred from its foliation that only counts its 214 medieval leaves, and affirmed in the catalog record contents that states Exodus through Psalms completely missing.

The manuscript has clearly seen much use in its day, seen in a number of annotations that are worth looking into, including lists of numbered references in several different hands. Multiple fine examples occur of one of the more memorable forms of note-taking in the middle ages, the “nota bene” mark — a monogram made out of the letters forming the word ‘nota’, urging the reader to take special note of the text it is placed next to. The Dimock Bible is full of such symbols, occasionally varying in form, but clearly signaling an attendant reader (or probably a series of readers) that might wish to come back to certain passages again and again.

As only one example among many, next to Isaiah 40:26 we see an asterisk-like mark which stands beside an annotation expanding in the outer margin as “co[n]ve[r]tim[in]i ad me om[ne]s fines terr[a]e quia ego d[omi]n[u]s d[eu]s v[i]r…” (etc., etc.).  This mark, made of an oblique stroke over a pair of dots, is one of an identical pair of signes-de-renvoi.  It signals the start of an ‘omission’ added in the margin; its match within the text signals the place where these words fit within the course of the passage. Its twin rests below line 6 of the text, between “hec. qui“. (Curiously, that addition does not appear to correspond with missing text at that point.)

Further down, the modern Isaiah ch. 41 is created out of the rubbed-out remains of the roman numeral XLVIII (48).

Smith College, MRBC MS 240, fol. 62r. Isaiah 40 and marginal annotations. Photography by Hannah Goeselt.

If that weren’t enough, beyond the bible’s textual organization and reading usage, there are two peculiarities that make the manuscript stand out from the crowd.

Scribal Hands, Blank Leaves,
and a “Seal Impression”
— or, “Things Found in Books”

Smith College, MRBC MS 240, fol. 14r. Image via smith_1365987_JP2_af282895264177048758c4fe965464e8afaa7080844dc41e5f35586dbc167837.

A quire in the Book of Genesis is done by a different hand (see Genesis Anomaly), with wildly different decoration to go with it — such as this wolf that forms the U (or V) of Venit in Genesis 35:6 (“Venit igit[ur] iacob luzam qu[a]e . . . “).  With an upright back, the creature spreads its forelegs beside the text and raises its tail to foliate terminals above the top line.

These leaves appear to have been added early in the history of the use of the book, due to the presence of marginal notation in the same medieval hand as other sections, if only to make brief comments and manually add in chapter numeration. The chapters are a necessary addition on the user’s part, as the original schema for this quire has none.

Three blank leaves, containing ruled lines but never written on, precede the continuation of the first program of artist and script, now beginning the Book of Proverbs. It remains unclear why the added material did not continue on with the other missing books. One possible theory that could account for the missing book portions despite the added quire is that the outlier came from a separate manuscript entirely, and was the result of an attempt to supplement missing material from the main codex at a fairly early point in its history, enough to have some of its marginalia included in this section.

The issue at hand comes down to whether this quire was made specifically to repopulate this Vulgate manuscript or if it was scavenged from another source entirely. If more quires existed, it would account for at least one mystery of the bible, as this outlier quire is stamped with its own history separate to being bound within this current volume.

Smith College, MRBC MS 240, fols. 24v-25r, with impression on page facing the opening of the Prologue to Proverbs. Photography by Hannah Goeselt.

Smith College, MRBC MS 240, fol. 23v, detail. ‘Seal’ impression, turned upright. Image via smith_1365987_JP2_af282895264177048758c4fe965464e8afaa7080844dc41e5f35586dbc167837.

The firm outline of a lozenge-shaped impression is visible across the blank leaves, and shows a stark break in book continuity from page to page. When its image is viewed upright, we see a standing figure in a mid-length tunic loom just behind a second, kneeling, figure turned away, arms raised in prayer. The first figure holds some kind of tall object in his hand, though the impression is obscured enough that it is unclear as to its nature. Surrounding the two are illegible markings that on its source would become text now just out of our reach.

In the catalog record, the current theory is that this is the result of a pilgrim’s medal. This is certainly not a bad theory, as there is evidence for such object being kept in books (even sewn onto the parchment, as in the case of Getty Museum Ms. 5 f.64)[3]. In her blog posts focusing on this mystery, Brittany Osborn proposes that it is the effect of a wax seal, with another theory that it is the seal matrix itself[4].  (However, as Mildred Budny noted in conversation, a matrix could very well have been pushed into the surface, but its backing would have prevented it from resting between leaves.)

Whether a pilgrim badge or seal, it should be reiterated that the object itself never rested within the bound book, rather showing through the final leaf of the outlier quire onto its preceding folios without continuing on to Proverbs and the original program, which leaves us with the possible scenario that the object resting underneath the unbound quire, and being left in this spot for some time with a deal of pressure before being added to the rest of the manuscript.

This feature has been previously noted and expanded upon in two posts from Osborn’s blog “Manuscripts: Illuminating the Mysteries in the Margins”, as part of the Five College Consortium’s study and catalog of its collective holdings (combining that of UMass Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Amherst, and Hampshire), and initial contributions to Digital Scriptorium.  Her analysis of the overlapping impressions in the parchment of a vessica-shaped seal may be seen in Behind the Impression.

In her blogpost, Osborn proposed a compelling parallel example of such a seal, found through the “UK detector finds database”, with a pair of full-length human figures in some form of opposition or attendance, respectively standing and kneeling, and a similar size, but not the exact match. (See http://www.ukdfd.co.uk/ukdfddata/showrecords.php?product=34719&cat=44 — although currently “The database is closed for update” [as seen on 6 July 2023, 14 July 2023, 12 August 2023, and 11 October 2023; login required]).  I am inclined to agree that the image depicted in the center (the “device”), within the scarcely legible inscription (the “legend”), probably comes from the life (or death) of a martyr saint such as Thomas Becket (1118 or 1120 – 1170), Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Protomartyr Stephen the Deacon (5—34 CE).

Portable Antiquities Scheme, ID LEIC82C839. Medieval copper-alloy seal matrix (front and back), found in Leicestershire, along with its seal impression. Image by Creative Commons By attribution, via https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/899948.

A rather similar approach to the pair of figures appears on a copper alloy seal matrix found in Leicestershire, ID 899948. Its entry for the Portable Antiquities Scheme describes it thus:

The motif is of a man kneeling in prayer with a standing figure behind, who is standing facing away but with head turned towards the figure and a staff or sword? brandished over his head as if to strike. The image suggests the martyrdom of St.Thomas a Becket?

Further research might reveal more about the object formerly placed between the pages in the Dimock Bible, with its image turned upside-down within the book. For example, depending upon whether it might have been a seal or the matrix which would have formed the mold for seals, the impression as we view it could represent the ‘positive’ formed by a matrix, or the ‘negative’ produced by a seal. Within the scene, the identity of the object held by the standing figure could determine whether the interaction is benign or destructive.

An Erased Inscription

On the final verso, further potential insight into the manuscript’s provenance leaves us with one more tempting mystery at the end of our meeting with it.  Traces of a faint 4-line inscription at the top remain from a statement that probably functioned as an ownership inscription.  The statement has been scraped off rather thoroughly, although, even with just the naked eye, ghostly letters make their way to the surface.

1) Direct View

‘Flyleaf’ Erased = Smith College, MRBC MS 240, folio 214v.

2) ‘Inverted’

Inverted flyleaf = Smith College, MRBC MS 240, folio 214v. ‘Flyleaf’ Erased

Though I am interested in the possibilities of multi-spectral enhancement with photo manipulation programs, I am far from an expert on the matter. It may take visiting again, in person, with a black light or similar method to reveal anything more legible. Here, I have used the computer program ImageJ to “invert” the colors which has produced clearer letters here and there, but does not approach something that can be fully read.

To conclude, I hope you have enjoyed this small introduction to what I consider a worthy addition to the corpus of 13th-century Bibles and their related studies. It just goes to show that even straightforward-seeming genres as this contain hidden depths and unique personalities that, aided by close examination as well as the digital tools and resources at our disposal, may be coaxed out for our enjoyment.

Smith College, MRBC MS 240, side view of binding. Photography by Hannah Goeselt.

*****

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Budny who shared her time, patience, and expertise in a number of points to this blog, including her thoughts on seal matrices and their compositions.

Further Resources

De Hamel, Christopher. “Portable Bibles of the Thirteenth Century”. In The Book: A History of the Bible. London, New York: Phaidon Press, 2001.

Light, Laura. The thirteenth century and the Paris Bible”. In New Cambridge History of the Bible (New Cambridge History of the Bible), 380-391. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Ruzzier, Chiara. “The Miniaturisation of Bible Manuscripts in the 13th Century: A Comparative Study” In Trends in Statistical Codicology edited by Marilena Maniaci, 65-86. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110743838-003

Magrini, Sabina. “Production and Use of Latin Bible Manuscripts in Italy during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.” Manuscripta 51, no. 2 (2007): 209–57. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.mss.1.100105

Melzer, Libby. “‘A Pocketful of Miracles’: The Small format Paris Edition Manuscript Bible at State Library Victoria.” La Trobe Journal 103 (September 2019): 69–83.

*****

Notes

[1] Light, Laura. “French Bibles C.1200-30:  A New Look at the Origin of the Paris Bible,” The Early Medieval Bible; Its Production, Decoration and Use. Ed. Richard Gameson, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press (1994).

[2] Magrini, Sabina. “Vernacular Bibles, Biblical Quotations and the Paris Bible in Italy from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century: A First Report”. In Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill (2013): 238-40.

[3] Martin, Rheagan Eric. “Peregrinations of Parchment and Pewter: Manuscripts and Mental Pilgrimage” in Towards a Global Middle Ages. Getty Publications (2019): 246-48.

[4] https://manuscriptroadtrip.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/manuscript-road-trip-autumn-in-the-berkshires/

*****

Extra Comments

Mildred Budny, RGME WebEditor, fascinated by the features of the manuscript, including the curious impression between the sheets in the Genesis portion, as Hannah describes them for us, offers a few comments:

A vessica shape for a seal/matrix in itself does not necessarily denote an ecclesiastical (or monastic) seal.  Unless sufficient indication survives in the inscription to indicate ownership by an ecclesiastic or other communal religious community, or person of such capacity, it might be cautious to allow for the possibility that the object might have pertained to a lay individual or entity.  Also, might we know about traditions of seal production in Italy and, say, the Veneto region, given the indications of origin and perhaps use there?

Some thoughts about the two figures, both seen in profile.  For example, does the kneeling figure have a tonsure?  The bare head and short, knee-length, tunic of the standing figure presumably rule him out as a knight intent upon assassinating Thomas.  There are no flying projectiles, as in the ‘Stephen seal’, nor does the standing figure raise a hand apparently with such intention.  Does that figure, with partly bowed head, hold something like, say, a censor, as an (obedient) attendant for a praying suppliant or officiant?

The impression left in the manuscript and this blogpost by Hannah offer a serendipitous opportunity to bring together several seemingly distinct strands of RGME research and interests.  For some years now, the RGME has engaged in research on seals and seal matrices, and hosted sessions with papers on them and their contexts.

  • Seals, Matrices & Documents
  • Seals, Seal-Matrices & Documents: Links of Interest
  • McEwan (2020 Congress)
  • Budny (2021 Congress)
  • Starter Kit
  • Curiouser and Curiouser

We welcome Hannah’s guided tour to this manuscript and its multiple features.

*****

Editor’s Note

We thank Hannah for her guided tour to this manuscript and available reference resources for it.  We look forward to learning more about her work as it advances.

She has reported on other aspects of her work for RGME Symposia, so that we have been able to glimpse something of her diverse range of interests.  See:

  • 2022 Autumn Symposium Program
  • 2022 Autumn Symposium Booklet
  • 2023 Spring Symposium “From the Ground Up”

She brought to our attention a leaf from one of the manuscripts our blog visits and revisits:

  • Two Old Testament Leaves from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’ at Smith College

As Hannah’s blogpost joins our RGME blog on Manuscript Studies, we invite you to visit other posts about manuscripts, Vulgate Bible manuscripts, documents, seals, fragments, and other material evidence from the medieval and other periods.  See the Contents List.

We hope to hear more sometime from Hannah Goeselt, Guest Blogger, about how her explorations of manuscripts progress, and what discoveries they bring.  Thank you, Hannah, and good fortune with your quest!

*****

Questions and Suggestions?

Do you recognize these scribes and scribal artists in other manuscripts? Do you have suggestions about the date and place of origin of this manuscript? Do you have thoughts about the ghost-like impression between its sheets, perhaps from a seal or seal-matrix?

Please leave your Comments here, Contact Us, or join the conversation on our RGME Facebook page.

We look forward to hearing from you.

*****

Tags: Cardinal Alderano Cybo, Digital Scriptorium, Dimock Bible, Elizabeth Jordan, Emily Clara Jordan Folger, Erased Ownership Inscriptions, George Edward Dimock, GuestBlogger Hannah Goeselt, Image-Enhancement, Latin Vulgate Bibles, Manuscript studies, Mary Augusta Jordan, Medieval manuscripts, Medieval Seals and Seal Matrices, Mortimer Rare Book Collection MS 240, Nota-bene Marks, Otto F. Ege, Pilgrims' Badges, Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts, Seal Impression, Seal Matrices, Seymour de Ricci, Smith College, Stephen the Deacon Protomartyr, Things Found In Books, Thomas Becket, Vassar College, William Edwin Bools
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Another Visit to The Library Cafe

December 30, 2018 in Interview, Interviews, Manuscript Studies, Reports

Interview with Thomas E. Hill
Art Librarian and Host of The Library Cafe

Thomas Hill welcomes guests to The Library Cafe. Photography © Mildred Budny

At the Entrance to The Library Cafe

This time, we revisit The Library Cafe at Vassar College, for an interview with the creator and host of the series of radio interviews, broadcast on wvkr.org.

Thomas Hill shows the selections stocking The Library Cafe. Photography © Mildred Budny

The Barista

An earlier visit, invited by Tom, yielded an interview for his series. Broadcast live on Wednesday, 12 October 2016, the interview with our Director can be heard through the website of the Library Cafe.

  • Radio Star
  • A Visit to the Library Cafe

Our Director’s accompanying blogpost gives some further reflections, adds a glossary of Names mentioned in the interview (People, Places, Libraries, Books, and Manuscripts), with links and illustrations, and examines the processes by which dedicated research and the changing world of educational opportunities (or the reverse) led to the formation and development of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence. See Here.

The New Visit

A visit to Vassar for the purpose in August, 2018, yielded this in-depth interview, with questions posed by our Research Group Director, Mildred Budny (an alumna of Vassar College), and thoughtful, detailed responses by Tom Hill. The resulting pair of interviews were broadcast in October as Thomas Edward Hill. Following the initial broadcasts, they can be heard anytime as a podcast.

Seated at his desk in his office, Thomas Hill checks the audio for his Interview.  Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Tom Checks the Audio for His Interview

Booklet Page 1 of the 'Interview with our Font & Layout Designer' (2015-16)

“Interview” Cover Page

We thank Tom greatly for his generosity, hospitality, and inspiration!

With illustrations, we prepare the transcript for publication as a booklet, within the growing series of our interviews in audio or visual forms.

Some of them include the interview booklets with our Layout and Font Designer and with the Author and Layout Designer of the illustrated catalogue co-published by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

  • Interview with Our Layout and Font Designer (2016)
  • Design and Layout of the Illustrated Catalogue (2018)

We look forward to sharing the illustrated booklet showcasing Tom’s interview!

Thomas E. Hill stands at the entrance to the Vassar College Library. Photography by Mildred Budny

At the entrance to the Vassar College Library, August 2018

*****

Tags: Interviews, The Library Cafe, Thomas E. Hill, Vassar College
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Radio Star

October 13, 2016 in Announcements, Reports, Uncategorized

Radio Interview with our Director

Photography by David Immerman.

Photography by David Immerman.

In a newly available broadcast, Mildred Budny is interviewed for The Library Cafe series, hosted by our Associate Thomas Hill.

We invite you to listen, at your leisure, to the newly broadcast radio interview with our Director. Recorded in association with a Class Reunion in June 2016 at her alma mater, Vassar College, it offers the occasion, and the setting, to reflect upon the formative examples of good teachers and a long-term immersion in studying the original sources, manuscripts of course included.

Broadcast live on Wednesday 12 October 2016, the interview can be heard on the web through the website of the Library Cafe. Hear Here.

Our Director’s accompanying blogpost gives some further reflections, adds a glossary of Names mentioned in the interview (People, Places, Libraries, Books, and Manuscripts), with links and illustrations, and examines the processes by which dedicated research and the changing world of educational opportunities (or the reverse) led to the formation and development of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence. See Here.

Thomas Hill explains the iconography of the cycle of tapestries adorning the entrance hall to the Vassar College Library. Photography © Mildred Budny

Thomas Hill and Sally V. Kiel stand in the Vassar College Main Library on a sunny day in June. Photography © Mildred Budny.

*****

Booklet Page 1 of the 'Interview with our Font & Layout Designer' (2015-16)This radio interview, joining the recorded Oral Tradition stands alongside the first interview (in written form) published on our own website. We asked some pertinent questions, and received detailed, reflective answers from our Associate Leslie French. Because he prefers not to appear in photographs (his chosen attribute is said to be the Tarnhelm), we illustrate the introduction to his interview with his designs for the Research Group. See here.  That interview takes the form of a freely downloadable booklet, accessible through that link.

*****

These several interviews, for which we give thanks, represent a development in our history, as we turn the spotlight onto the People who stand within the books, the research, the collaborations, and the Group.

More interviews are planned.  They may take the forms which the available and preferred recording media invite.

We welcome suggestions for further subjects. Please let us know. Do you think that this is a good plan?

*****

The Host of 'The Library Cafe' in the Radio Studio. Photography © Mildred Budny

Tom In the Recording Studio before we begin the Interview. Photography © Mildred Budny.

Tags: Interviews, Leslie French, Mildred Budny, Sally V. Kiel, Tarnhelm, The Library Cafe, Thomas Hill, Vassar College, Vassar College Library
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A Visit to The Library Café

October 10, 2016 in Announcements, Manuscript Studies, Reports

The Library Café
and Its Host, Thomas Hill
of the Vassar College Art Library

Close-Up of The Host of 'The Library Cafe' in the Radio Studio. Photography © Mildred Budny[This post announces, and accompanies, a radio interview with our Director, Mildred Budny, describing aspects of our origins, development, purposes, and activities.  You can hear the interview, beginning with its live broadcast on Wednesday 12 October 2016 from 12:00 noon ET, or 17:00 GMT, here.]

We celebrate a visit to The Library Café and its host, Thomas Hill, Art Librarian at Vassar College.  That prime educational institution is the Alma Mater of the Director of the Research Groups.

For a while now, I (this is the Director talking) have been a fan of Tom’s series of radio interviews, and a fan of Tom, with his wide interests, generous hospitality, and fascinating conversations.  We first met, as I recall, at one of my talks at Vassar, and we have continued to talk, and I have continued to listen, over the years since then, at Vassar and elsewhere.

Here is how the Vassar College Art Library describes The Library Cafe:

The Library Café is a weekly program of table talk with scholars, artists, publishers and librarians about books, scholarship, and the formation and circulation of knowledge.

As for my View? It is breathtakingly wonderful. That’s my opinion.  Delighted to become part of it!

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Alum Authors Meet & Greet Event, Asterix, Benjamin Kohl, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, British Library Additional MS 89000, British Library Royal MS 1 E.vi, British Museum, Budny's Illustrated Catalogue, Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Ornamental Metalwork, Codex Amiatinus, Corbie Psalter, Cuthbert Gospel, David Wilson, Donald J. Olsen, Interviews, Julia McGrew, Linda Nochlin, Lindisfarne Gospels, Saint Dunstan, Sally V. Kiel, Sarah Tredwell, Steve Glasgow, Sutton Hoo, The Library Cafe, Thomas Hill, Vassar College, Vassar College Art Library, Vassar College Store
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Seminar on the Evidence of Manuscripts (19 June 1993)

September 21, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Uncategorized

“Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 201”

The Parker Library, 19 June 1993

Invitation for 'Corpus MS 201' Seminar 19 June 1993In the Series of Seminars on the Evidence of Manuscripts
The Parker Library

Invitation in pdf (2 pages including RSVP Form)

The previous Seminar in the series considered

“Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts at Worcester”
(Pembroke College, Oxford, 13 March 1993)

[First published on 21 September 2016 by Mildred Budny]

This meeting cast the spotlight upon a single volume — albeit a complicated and multi-partite volume, comprising an assembly of 3 Parts from different former manuscripts.  A Triple Decker, with lots of trimmings.

Once upon a time, the margins of the book were included in the trimming process, alas.  We had a close look as experts gathered from several centres, even by proxy.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Archbishop Wulfstan, Archbishop Wulfstan's Commonplace Book, Budny's Illustrated Catalogue, Corpus Christi College MS 190, Corpus Christi College Ms 191, Corpus Christi College MS 196, Corpus Christi College MS 201, Corpus Christi College MS 265, Cotton MS Nero A I, Cotton MS Tiberius A III, Cotton MS Vespasian A VIII, David Ganz, Grimbald of Saint-Bertin, Julia McGrew, New Minster Winchester, Palaeographical and Textual Handbook, Parker Library, Patrick Wormald, Seminars on Manuscript Evidence, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, Stowe MS 944, The Library Cafe, Thomas Hill, Vassar College
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