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Reading medieval coins

What coins where used in the Middle Ages and how far they travelled

Medieval coins show us that communication through both text and image was not restricted to books in the Middle Ages. Coins were not only a measure of how much things were worth, they were capable of expressing personal and territorial identity, economic security and collective memory.

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The Bibliophile of Bruges

Exploring the Manuscript Collection of Louis of Bruges

The 14th and 15th centuries witnessed the rise of great princely and aristocratic libraries all over Europe. These were composed of books that had been inherited, received as gifts, purchased or personally commissioned, either for private devotion and personal education, for pleasure and amusement or for display.

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Medieval monastic book inventories

Learn about medieval book lists and how they differ from today's library catalogues

Libraries are places of knowledge. Everyone who owns books and everyone who manages libraries has always wanted to know what exactly they have in their possession. This is as true today as it was in the nineteenth century, or even the Middle Ages.

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Corbie Abbey and today’s font

How Corbie Abbey's medieval manuscripts connect to today's fonts

When you think of the French region of Picardy, most likely important cities such as Amiens, Beauvais, or Laon come to mind. Corbie is less known and it is not that easy to find even on 18th-century maps of northern France.

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The workshop of Diebold Lauber in Hagenau

Books with (and without) pictures

Advertising is not a feature of modern times. Diebold Lauber, a 15th century scribe from the Alsace region, advertised his products in several manuscripts from his own workshop, such as the one ...

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Video Series: Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book

Join eight show-and-tell sessions with unique artefacts in the reading room of the Leiden University Library

Medieval manuscripts were collected and read for the texts they contained, especially those surviving from classical antiquity. But the book can tell us so much more than solely the text it contains! Studying the materiality of books can provide important information about how, when, where and even why they were made. It can also show how books were used and valued during the many centuries of their existence.

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From manuscript production to the printing press

How the page layout evolved during the early years of the printed book.

The first books produced in Europe using the movable type printing system were printed in the 1450’s in Mainz, Germany. Although printing had already been practised for several centuries in China, Japan and Korea, it was German inventor Johann Gutenberg (1400-1468) who perfected the technique that allowed the mass reproduction of texts and the fabrication of high quality printed books.

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Reading and debating at the Arts Faculties

University life in the middle ages

At medieval universities the faculty of arts was a so-called propaedeutic faculty. This meant that you first had to complete your studies at the Faculty of Arts before you were allowed to study at any of the other faculties. Unlike the other faculties - Law, Theology, and Medicine - the arts had no practical professional use at the time.

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How the Carolingian dynasty changed how we read

Learn how the Frankish noble family helped popularise and standardise written text as we know it now.

Having spaces and punctuation might seem indispensable in any text today, but in the Middle Ages these were seen as major innovations in writing and reading. Learn how the Carolingian dynasty helped popularise and standardise written text as we know it now.

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Private and public reading

Different reading practices in the Middle Ages

People have always practiced private reading (silent) and public reading (out loud, either as performance or reading to an intimate group). These two different ways to read were never mutually exclusive, and depended on one another for survival and transmission. Just as today we practice private reading with physical books or ebooks, but we also read out loud to one another or listen to audio books. Medieval people both read privately and were read to. The kind of reading a person practiced at a given time depended on the social situation and their level of education.

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Monastic mealtimes

Nourishment for body and soul

In most monastic orders, daily life was communal. Monks and nuns slept, prayed, worked, ate and read together with their brothers or sisters. At all times, their thoughts should have been oriented towards God and the tenets of Catholic faith – even during mealtimes. The Benedictine Rule contains strict guidelines on how meals had to be organised and what behaviour was (not) tolerated. Meals were served twice a day in the refectory, where the community sat at long tables, and talking was absolutely prohibited, even for the abbot or abbess. Communication, such as requesting food or cutlery, was done through hand signals.

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From Easter to Emperor

Monastic annals and the evolution of medieval historiography

The concept of a monastery as a repository of ancient and rare information is a popular one in western culture. Perhaps most famously depicted in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, monastic locations have featured in popular series such as The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones. Despite this, historiography – that is the writing of history – is probably one of the last types of texts that come to mind when one tries to imagine what was being written and read in medieval monasteries. Nonetheless, it was at monasteries that historiography was cultivated and intensively used. Most of our knowledge about the early Middle Ages comes from texts written in those communities. The relationship between monastic life, the calculation of time, and the writing of history is the subject of this blog.

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Cicero’s legacy in medieval western Europe

Rhetorical and philosophical teaching of Marcus Tullius Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE) was one of the most notable figures in Roman history. As a contemporary of Caesar, Cato and Pompey, Cicero witnessed the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the career of Octavian, later the first ‘emperor’ Augustus. His gruesome death was directly linked to the political turmoil of his time.

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Monastic vs scholastic reading habits

Differences in medieval readers approaches

With the establishment of universities, the 13th century saw a major change of reading habits amongst the literate (that is, those who could read Latin) elite.

Amongst the medieval literate elite, there were two major methods of reading: monastic and scholastic, each divided into three ‘levels’. Monastic reading consisted of lectio / meditatio / contemplatio - that is: reading / meditation / contemplation. This method was primarily concerned with memorisation and enlightenment through repetition and deep reading (contemplation). To read this way was to know by memory and intimately understand a very few books in their entirety.

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Large to small

Books in 13th century

A diverse array of readerships existed over the span of the approximately 1000 years that makes up the Middle Ages. Manuscripts show how the needs of the readership (their reading habits) influence the way books were made. One of the more radical and notable changes occurred in the 13th century : that is, the increasingly frequent production of small format books.

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From Latin to the Vernacular

The 12th century saw a literary revolution in Europe

The 12th century saw the rise of vernacular literature - a literary revolution in Europe. In actuality, the first vernacular texts appeared on the continent as early as the 8th or 9th centuries, but such examples are rare.

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Luxury vs. functionality

How a manuscript can indicate its readership

Today, we make a distinction between books for pleasure and books for study. Modern scholars read differently than someone reading as a leisure activity. In the Middle Ages, there was a similar distinction between the reading habits of scholars and of the reading public. We can tell the kind of audience a manuscript was destined for by its design and we can tell how it was used by the images and words inscribed on the parchment.

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How manuscript circulation in the Middle Ages influenced production

Learn about how aiming for more efficient manuscript production led to repeated iconography

In the Middle Ages, manuscript circulation occurred in two ways : amongst artisans who created new manuscripts, which then circulated amongst the reading population. Several copies of a single text - which were created and shared within a specific social network - tend to depict the same scenes in illuminations (though often in different artistic styles). This phenomenon reveals a lot about reading culture and manuscript transmission in late medieval urban culture.

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Beguines and literature in the Middle Ages

13th century female semi-religious orders who created and transmitted vernacular literature

Women in the Middle Ages greatly contributed to the creation and transmission of literature, both Latin and vernacular. The Beguines were one of the most influential groups of women in this respect. They were an order of female semi-religious active largely in the 13th century in and around (present day) northern France, southern Germany, and the Low Countries.

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Pray and work: The Rule of Saint Benedict

6th century guide for communal religious life

Few texts have had as much impact on Western monasticism as the Rule of Saint Benedict. Written by Benedict of Nursia (d. 547), the rule offers a well-suited and practical guide for communal religious life, attaining monastic ideals by governing the monks’ entire day.

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