{"id":7886,"date":"2016-08-25T07:57:43","date_gmt":"2016-08-25T07:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/?p=7886"},"modified":"2020-07-05T14:41:02","modified_gmt":"2020-07-05T14:41:02","slug":"seminar-on-the-evidence-of-manuscripts-may-1989","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/seminar-on-the-evidence-of-manuscripts-may-1989\/","title":{"rendered":"Seminar on the Evidence of Manuscripts (May 1989)"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. “Illustrations in Manuscripts
\nAs Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Life”<\/h2>\n
\"\u00a9<\/a>

\u00a9 The British Library Board, Cotton MS Claudius B IV, folio 19r. Reproduced by permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

First in the Series of Seminars on the Evidence of Manuscripts<\/a>
\nThe Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
\n20 May 1989<\/p>\n

[Published on 25 August 2016, with updates<\/em>]<\/p>\n

With invitations to colleagues in various fields, a full day’s seminar took place on Saturday, 20 May 1989 at the Parker Library.\u00a0 This was long before the rise of digital imaging, digital facsimiles of manuscripts, and the proliferation of manuscript images on the internet.\u00a0 Let alone a website<\/a> devoted to that manuscript collection.\u00a0 We had to, and wished to, look at the books.<\/p>\n

That wish, plus application and dedication, had led to the gathering of resources, funding included, for full-time research in that place, alongside its major conservation programme.\u00a0 In the Spring of 1989, as the first 2 years of this research were rounding out, we were poised to begin, on 1 October, a five-year Research Project on “Anglo-Saxon and Related Manuscripts” supported by the Leverhulme Trust.<\/p>\n

The Approach<\/h3>\n

On the day of the Seminar, there gathered specialists in archaeology, linguistics, library history, architectural history, manuscript studies, Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, and related fields.\u00a0 There came R.I. Page<\/a> (Parker Librarian), David Wilson<\/a>, Christine Fell<\/a>, Richard Gem<\/a>, Martin Carver<\/a>, James Graham-Campbell<\/a>, Leslie Webster<\/a>, and Mildred Budny<\/a> (Senior Research Associate at the Parker Library and now the Director of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence).\u00a0 The aim was to bring together different forms of expertise, both “bookish” and practical, to consider illustrations in the manuscripts themselves as witnesses for daily life, Anglo-Saxon in particular.<\/p>\n

Too often, we had observed, illustrations from manuscripts found their way into publications with accompanying texts and captions having little recognition of the complexity which the visual evidence might carry.\u00a0 Not necessarily could images from the “troves” of extensively illustrated manuscripts serve the appointed purposes, given a clearer awareness of the characteristics, or degrees of “veracity”, which those images possess.\u00a0 For example, however “convincing” or tempting, the scenes in some Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the Psychomachia<\/em> by the 5th-century Spanish poet Prudentius<\/a> might be as illustrations for Anglo-Saxon life, it is worth knowing that those manuscripts derive, by definition, from earlier manuscripts, and that some of the surviving manuscripts made in Continental centers show very similar objects, costumes, hairstyles, gestures, buildings, weapons, and drinking vessels.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/a>

\u00a9 The British Library Board, Cotton MS Claudius B IV, folio 31v: Genesis 19:3\u201213. Reproduced by permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

Seated around the reading table of the Library, the members of the Seminar could directly examine some manuscripts in the Library’s collection and some facsimiles of others.\u00a0 Thus, for example, we could compare Corpus MS 23<\/a>, Part I, and its Psychomachia,<\/em> skillfully illustrated with coloured-outline drawings, with the monochrome plates printed in the monumental publication of Die illustrierten prudentius-Handschriften<\/em> by Richard Stettiner<\/a> (1905); and with the printed facsimiles edited respectively by Israel Gollancz (1927) of the Caedmon Manuscript of Old English Poetry<\/a> (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius MS 11); by C.R. Dodwell and Peter Clemoes (1974) of the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch<\/a> (London, British Library, Cotton MS Claudius B IV); and by M.R. James (1935) of the Eadwine Psalter<\/a> (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.17.1).<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/a>

\u00a9 The British Library Board, Cotton MS Claudius B IV, folio 13v: Genesis 6:12\u201222. Reproduced by permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

Other Corpus manuscripts brought into view included:<\/p>\n