Workshop 11. “Manuscripts at Play, Continued: Figured Texts”

October 2, 2026 in Announcements, Event Registration, Manuscript Studies, Research Group Workshops, Workshops on "The Evidence of Manuscripts"

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

Workshop 11
(Sunday 25 October 2026 online)

“Manuscripts at Play, Continued:
Figured Texts”

[Posted on 1 October 2026, with updates]

We continue our series of workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts Etc.” It comprises a range of styles including presentations, interviews, roundtables, and other forms of conversations. For information about the series:

This time, by request, we revisit, expand upon, and follow forward on the subjects which we presented for the RGME sponsored session at the 2026 International Medieval Congress in July 2026. See

2026 IMC Poster 2 (Image)

The Purpose

For our Workshop, we gather panelists, respondents, and participants of that session to develop more aspects of the subject, report further work, and contribute to the conversation for a wider audience, also the view for a recording to ensure a longer-lasting record.

Presenters and Respondents from that session return to expand upon their contributions and/or to present variations upon them or new subjects responding to the theme of “Figured Texts”. We also welcome an in-person attendee from that session, Mark Saltviet, who contributed questions and comments during the Q&A for the session and then contacted the RGME Director with the interest of participating in our activities.

It was Mark’s expression of interest which inspired the preparation of our new guide about joining the RGME:

Contributors at the 2026 Leeds Session:

2026 IMC Poster 1 (Text)

The Plan

We gather to compare notes and join in discussion. The subjects of manuscripts (and other written records) in terms of their figural and figured approaches to the words as laid out on the writing surfaces, and as intended to be construed or parsed or puzzled out, have many directions. Some we have touched upon in the 2026 session on “Manuscripts at Play and as Play” at Leeds. Some we will continue to explore or broach afresh in our Workshop 11. Some may emerge for consideration, perhaps also for further exploration, at the Workshop.

We welcome you to bring your interests, questions, and suggestions.

The Team

We gather speakers and respondents from our 2026 IMC session to present case-studies, report work-in-progress, and invite discussion. In alphabetical order:

Mildred Budny
Antony Henk
David Porreca
Mark Saltviet

We hope that at another time Michael Allman Conrad, the organiser and speaker for the 2026 IMS Leeds session, might join us to reflect upon his close study of Hrabanus Maurus’s life and work, to expand his erudite report on the monumental illustrated manuscripts and printed editions.

The Program

1. Mildred Budny
Executive Director, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

“Figured Texts as Genre”

Our Director will introduce the session and its speakers, moderate the Q&A portion of the session, and contribute her own reflections upon long-term work on manuscripts (and other forms) containing ‘Figured Texts’ of many kinds.

Stockholm, National Library of Sweden, Codex A. 135), page 23. Image digitized by the National Library of Sweden, via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Codex_Aureus_(A_135)#/media/File.

2. Mark Saltveit
Independent Scholar

“The Palindrome Sylloge”

Mark will report on a forthcoming publication. In his words:

The most consequential discovery I’ve made is what we’re now calling “The Palindrome Sylloge,” a previously unknown collection of 14 Latin poems from late antiquity or perhaps the very early medieval period, found (illegibly) on the front flyleaf of British Library Harley MS 2735 (c. 860 CE).  A generous tip from [RGME Trustee] David Ganz led me to it and I’ve had assistance from many top scholars in different fields in wrestling it to the ground.  It has:

    • 2 church inscriptions from de Rossi’s ICUR II,
    • 8 versus recurrentes (5 unpublished),
    • an unpublished ekphrastic distich about two miracles of the Apostle Peter,
    • two carmen minora of Claudian, and
    • Ps-Seneca’s De qualitate temporis.  

Our editio princeps is in revision at the journal Scriptorium.

The manuscript containing the flyleaf comprises a copy of the Liber Glossarum encyclopedia written circa 850-860 CE. Mark’s forthcoming publication, to which we look forward, will appear as:

“BL Harley MS 2735 fol.1r: A Pioneering Work of Carolingian Fragmentology?”

London, British Library, Harley MS 2735, fol. 1r. Image via https://iiif.biblissima.fr/collections/manifest/c34b28511233852e9ea568897ba4f0d4aea4e6ef.

3. David Porreca
Department of Classical Studies, University of Waterloo

“Figured Glosses for Classical and Other Authors
in the Copenhagen Fabricius Compendium“

David will speak about his long-term work on the marginal notes in a manuscript containing multiple authors, amounting to a Christian Neoplatonic compendium, which he prepares for a critical edition to appear in the annual journal Micrologus (https://www.sismelfirenze.it/index.php/riviste/micrologus).

Containing works on medicine, the natural sciences, and other texts, the authors represented in the compendium include:

Stylistic and other features point to a date of the twelfth or thirteenth century and origin probably in France. For its contents and digital facsimile, see:

Copenhagen, Det Konglige Bibliotek, MS Fabricius 91 4°, fol. 1r: Danish Royal Library, by permission

4. Antony R. Henk
Ruhr-Universität Bochum

“Playing with Sacred Space:
Mapping and Re-Mapping the Holy Land
in Manuscripts of Adomnán’s and Bede’s De locis sanctis”

In Antony’s words:

In my response paper for the 2026 Leeds session ‘Manuscripts at Play and as Play: Temporalities and (Re)Configurations as Reading Methods’, I discussed how the diagrams which accompany many manuscript recensions of Adomnán’s De locis sanctis can be understood as tools which facilitate Jean Leclerq’s concept (1961) of the peregrinatio in stabilitate. I suggested that these diagrams of holy sites are analogous to the ‘battle maps’ or ‘dungeon maps’ used in tabletop role-playing games, in that they allow the audience to more concretely visualise physical space than is possible via narrative description alone.

In my revisit to this topic and framework, I wish to examine how various copies of Adomnán’s work, and copies of Bede’s epitome of it, engage in ‘playing’ with these maps and the locations they aim to depict. In particular, I will explore the interplay of text and drawing, as well as the scribe-artists’ widely varying treatments of visual symbol, abstraction, and aestheticism.

Background

For a digital facsimile of a manuscript with Adomnán’s illustrated text, see:

  • Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits,  MS Latin 13048, f. 4v, via gallica.fr

Adomnán, De locis sanctis, Diagram of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits,  MS Latin 13048, f. 4v: Detail, Image Public Domain via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10533305c/f16.item.

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Registration

See you there!

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