VIDEO SERIES

The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this first episode, she discusses medieval scripts.

Medieval script tends to change over time but is also influenced by strong national traditions. This phenomenon helps scholars to date and localize manuscript books. Unlike books today, medieval books don’t have title pages, and quite often they also lack scribal colophons stating when and where a book was written (and by whom). This is why the study of historical scripts (palaeography) is important. Irene O’Daly shows examples of caroline script (BPL 137), pre-gothic script (SCA 16), gothic script (PER F 25) and humanistic script (BPL 9). These scripts were consecutively used in the 9th-11th centuries, 12th century, 13th-15th centuries and 15th century.

The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this second episode, she discusses the structure of the medieval page.

In modern printed books, chapters begin on a new page and paragraphs are usually indented. Not so in the layout of a medieval codex, where text is structured by colour and decoration, not by space.

Painted or decorated initials – sometimes in combination with a full-page miniature – mark the beginning of a new text section (SCA 1). A scribe can even write texts in different colours when presenting concurrent narratives spread over two pages (SCA 14).

The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this third episode, she discusses how scribes adapted their manuscripts to facilitate discontinuous reading.

Early medieval reading was often ‘intensive’. A monk in his cell could perform the lectio divina for months on end with just one book, reading it slowly, from cover to cover, contemplating the meaning of each and every word.

The scholarly reading of teachers and students in cathedral schools and universities was different: it focused on intertextuality, used more texts, but not necessarily entire texts. The same with devotional reading in breviaries and books of hours. Gradually this ‘extensive’, discontinuous reading was facilitated by clever navigation tools. Scribes included lists of books, chapters or pericopes (LTK 243 I) at the front of the codex, indexes at the back, and combined them with a foliation; added running titles in the top margin (BPL 59) and rubrics in the outer margins (BPL 59, LTK 243 I); attached bookmarks to the edge of important pages (BPL 2001).

The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this fourth episode, she discusses the traces that scribes left in their books.

Most medieval scribes did their job without revealing their identity. But several of them, reaching the end of the copied text and with a sigh of relief in their heart, signed and dated their work in a colophon. Sometimes they added interesting contextual information or even asked future readers to pray for them. (BPL 67, LTK 219, BPL 2541)

Unintentional traces of a scribe can be found when (s)he or a colleague corrected errors made during the writing process. A rare phenomenon occurs when the scribe copied from an exemplar that can be identified. A major continuation error links a written copy (BPL 3469) to its printed exemplar (1498 B 2).

The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this fifth episode she discusses the traces that readers left in the books they used.

A medieval manuscript book is an archaeological object with many layers, not only revealing traces from the scribe, but also traces from the users it encountered during the many centuries of its existence.

Interlinear or marginal annotations (called glosses or scholia) contain explanations of or comments on the text. Sometimes the lay-out is designed to facilitate commenting (BPL 82). Some manuscript books contain not only the annotations of several readers or ‘nota-bene’ signs to mark important passages, but also doodles without significant relation to the basic tekst (BPL 186).

The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this sixth episode, she discusses medieval bindings.

The binding is the ‘outside’ protecting the words on the double leaves of the quires sewn together to form the bookblock. There are impressive medieval bindings with blind-tooled leather over wooden boards, with metal corners, bosses and clasps added for extra protection and status (BPL 3683). Simple bindings, on the other hand, just consist of a flexible parchment cover (BPL 3744). By the way, not every medieval binding is an original binding (BUR Q 1).

Medieval manuscript books that came down to us have had long and sometimes busy lives, leading to several rebindings, sometimes recklessly cutting the edges of a bookblock with severe loss of running titles or border decoration (LTK 294).

Frequently medieval and post-medieval books contain traces of ‘predecessors’: fragments of manuscripts that were deemed worthless. Its parchment leaves were cut up to serve as a cover, as flyleaves (BPL 88) or to protect the center fold of paper quires against damage from the sewing thread (BPL 16 B). Fragments are important, as they testify to the existence of text sources.

Explore also BPL 146

The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this seventh episode, she discusses bindings consisting of parts that were not created at the same time and/or place.

The state of a medieval manuscript on the table of a library reading room can differ considerably from its original state when it left the scriptorium or workshop long ago. It might have a second, third or fourth binding. This binding can even contain two or more manuscripts that were written separately and came together only later in time when an owner decided to bring them together. Such a composite volume might contain related subject matter (BPL 191 E). A medieval binding from Egmond Abbey clearly shows several codicological units that once led their own separate lives (BPL 102). From the late 15th century onwards composite volumes could even contain both printed and manuscript parts (LTK 237).

The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this eighth and last episode, she discusses the dimensions and forms of manuscripts.

Form follows function; in other words: the outer appearance of a book can inform us about the way it was used. The dimensions of a gradual (BPL 3683) are huge because it was used by choir singers during liturgical services in the church when it was placed on a lectern. A tiny processional (BPL 3744) was held in one hand by a monk while walking and singing in a procession.

The shape of the calendar (VUL 100 C) is peculiar. This type of book, sometimes called a ‘bat book’ because its leaves unfold like those of a bat, was designed to be portable. The tab joining the leaves together could have been attached to clothing or a belt.

The ‘book block’ of SCA 38 B is a mixture of the scroll form and codex form called a leporello. The small leaves are folded and then glued together to create a long, accordion-shaped strip. It can be unfolded and read on one side, then re-folded, turned over and read on the other side.

Explore also: BPL 137 D, BPL 189