Picture Day Friday: Ely Cathedral

The central octagonal tower of the Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire, England is a feat of medieval engineering. Ely had its beginnings as an abbey church in c. 672. It was built by St. Etheldreda. The present building dates back to c. 1083. The original Romanesque style gave way to an exuberant gothic style of architecture.



[Image copyrighted by David Iliff.]

Top Beautiful Medieval Manuscripts

Here're what expert Giovanni Scorcioni has determined are the top ten most beautiful medieval manuscripts. Scorcioni is the co-founder of Facsimile Finder, a leading provider of facsimile editions of medieval manuscripts and quality copies of rare books.

1. Lindisfarne Gospels (I blogged about it before)
2. Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux
3. Godescalc Evangelistary
4. Prayer book of Claude de France
5. St. Alban's Psalter
6. Westminster Abbey Bestiary
7. Vienna Genesis
8. Black Hours (I blogged about it before)
9. Morgan Crusader Bible
10. Grimani Breviary

I'm going to talk about three of them here. The rest are blogged here by Medievalists.net. All photographs are copyrighted by Giovanni Scorcioni and used with permission.

Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux, Queen of France
Shelfmark Acc. No. 54.1.2 from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The medium used is grisaille (shades of gray), tempera, and ink on vellum. Use of vellum, instead of parchment, and extensive, detailed imagery and hues indicates that this was an expensive book made for a wealthy patron. It was made in Paris c. 1324–1328 by Jean Pucelle. According to the Met: "The figures are rendered in delicate grisaille that imparts an amazingly sculptural quality, and the images are accented with rich reds and blues and touches of orange, yellow, pink, lilac, and turquoise."


Godescalc Evangelistary
Shelfmark MS. Nouv. acq. lat. 1203 from Bibliothèque Nationale de France
The manuscript was commissioned by the Carolingian King Charlemagne on October 7, 781 and finished by the Frankish scribe Godescalc on April 30, 783. According to Wikipedia: "The Evangelistary is the earliest known manuscript produced at the scriptorium in Charlemagne's Court School in Aachen. The manuscript was intended to commemorate Charlemagne's march to Italy, his meeting with Pope Adrian I, and the baptism of his son Pepin."


Prayer Book of Claude de France
Shelfmark MS M. 1166 from the Morgan Library & Museum
It is a tiny jewel-like book that fits in the palm of a hand. It was finished by the artist in Tours in 1517, the year Claude de France was crowned Queen of France. According to the Morgan: "Her coat of arms appears on three different folios. The book is richly illustrated: the borders of each leaf are painted, front and back, with 132 scenes from the lives of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and numerous saints. The colors of his delicate palette are applied in tiny, seemingly invisible brushstrokes."

Picture Day Friday: Rare Black Vellum Manuscript

A rare black vellum Book of Hours from Bruges c.1480. It's kept at the Morgan Library and Museum in NYC. (MS M.493, folio 18 verso and 19 recto)

All 121 vellum folios of The Black Hours are stained in black. To make the writing stand out against the dark background, only white lead and opaque paints were used for the miniatures, and gold and silver ink for the script. Only three of these black parchment manuscripts survive to this day.


[Image copyrighted by Europe's History.]

Picture Day Friday: Medieval Waistcoast Made From Manuscripts

These days, purses made from book covers are popular with the bookish crowd. But this trend was popular in the Middle Ages, too. Here's a medieval waistcoat made in Iceland from a manuscript on parchment dated c.1375.


[Provenance unknown.]

Picture Day Friday: Medieval Illuminated Manuscript: Book of Hours

Book of Hours: Three Marys at the Sepulchre from Walters Art Museum's collection of illuminated manuscripts. This is manuscript W.102, folio 7 verso or page 14.

"This is a finely illuminated and iconographically rich Book of Hours, made in England at the end of the thirteenth century. The manuscript is incomplete and misbound. Its main artist can also be found at work in a bible at Oxford's Bodleian Library (Ms. Auct. D.3.2) and a psalter at Cambridge's Trinity College (Ms. O.4.16). This manuscript contains a number of unusual texts including the Hours of Jesus Crucified and the Office of St. Catherine. The patron of the manuscript is not clear: a woman is depicted as praying in many of the initials, but rubrics in the Office of the Dead mention "frères". The imagery is marvelously inventive, and the Hours of Christ Crucified are graced with images depicting the Funeral of Reynard the Fox in its margins. In the absence of a calendar, it is not possible to locate the origin of the manuscript precisely."

Picture Day Friday: Medieval Paper Planner: They had them then, too!

Move aside washi tape and stamps and colorful inks and stickers. Medieval people loved to decorate their daily schedulers with illuminated images in brilliant colors, and they wrote with beautiful calligraphic hands in these beautiful planners. Here's a page from May (year unknown).


[Image copyrighted by the British Library's Medieval Manuscripts section.]

Another May calendar c.1500 from Ghent, The Netherlands. This was one busy guy.


[Image copyrighted by the British Library's Medieval Manuscripts section.]

Medieval Manuscripts Paleography Summer School

The University of London's Institute of English Studies is offering a summer school in medieval manuscripts studies and paleography in June this year. Subject areas include Latin, English, Anglo-Saxon, German, and Greek paleography; history of scripts; illuminated manuscripts; codicology; vernacular editing; and liturgical and devotional manuscripts.

The summer school is hosted by the Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies with the co-operation of the British Library, the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House Library, the Warburg Institute, University College, King's College London, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

After half a year of online medieval manuscript studies offered by Stanford and Cambridge universities, titled Digging Deeper 1 and Digging Deeper 2, this summer school sounds like a heaven-sent opportunity to further my education in paleography (study of medieval scripts) and others areas of manuscript studies. Unfortunately, this is not something I can take up.

But if I were to go, these are the courses I would've signed up for:
—Introduction to the Insular System of Scripts to 900 A.D.
—Approaches to the Art of Insular Manuscripts
—Liturgical and Devotional Manuscripts I
—Liturgical & Devotional Manuscripts II
—Introduction to Latin Paleography
—Intermediate Latin Palaeography
—Intermediate Old English Paleography

The London Rare Books School also offers the following week-long courses with paleographical content: The Medieval Book, The Book in the Ancient World, and Latin Paleography. In July, it'll be offering an Introduction to Latin Paleography course.

Picture Day Friday: Three Orders of Medieval Society

Medieval writers described their society as having three orders: the cleric, the knight, and the peasant—those who prayed, those who fought, and those who labored. Image courtesy of Medieval Manuscripts, tweeting about the British Library's marvelous medieval manuscripts. Their blog is located here.

Medievalism: Tales After Tolkien Society

The Tales After Tolkien Society promotes short-form medieval scholarship in popular cultural genres, including but not limited to: fantasy, science fiction, westerns, romance, horror, crime, historical, children’s and young adult fiction, and cross-genre writing. "The Tales After Tolkien Society recognizes the foundational place J. R. R. Tolkien’s work has not only for the fantasy genre, but for popular medievalisms far more widely."

The blog also offers brief comments on recent medievalist scholarship, book and article reviews, and other popular cultural uses of medievalist themes.

The motivation for the blog came about from the 2011 issue of the Modern Language Association of America's publication Profession. "In it is a cluster of articles discussing the evaluation of digital scholarship, and in the introduction to that cluster is the suggestion that digital scholarship needs to be encouraged among junior scholars—those who have not yet been awarded tenure and those who find themselves off the tenure track but not secure in identities as independent scholars."

Other advantages that digital scholarship offers are an "ability to track emergent trends in research and scholarship," a reading and an evaluation of the pieces by peers via comments and page analytics, and a space for detailed discussion of current articles.

They are currently seeking new contributors to the blog. Please contact Helen Young for more information at talesafterolkien@gmail.com.

When Is a Book Not A Book?

A book is not a book when it's a book containing parts of one book or multiple books. This medieval book reliquary was called a cumdach or a book shrine. For example, the cumdach of Dimma's Book was produced in the twelfth century to encase the eighth century Gospel Book copied by the scribe Dimma.

Another example is the cumdach of Columba's Psalter. It was a copper and silver-plated book shrine that was made in the second half of the 11th century to hold the psalter of St. Columba, a manuscript that was created in the 6th or 7th century.

These shrines were fancy dust jackets, if you will. The cases were meant to directly resemble a book, symbolizing the important manuscripts found inside, and to protect the manuscripts from damage.

The shrines rival the books for super bling. This here on the left is the Gospel book known as the Codex Aureus or the Golden Book. It was made in the 9th century for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles II. The cover of the book is covered with gold, gems, sapphires, emeralds, and pearls.

[Both the images in this post are used with permission. They are copyrighted by Jenny Weston of Leiden University, The Netherlands and taken from http://medievalfragments.wordpress.com.]

The Shambles of York

[Click on the images for a bigger, better view.]








Have you heard of The Shambles? It's the Yorkshire version of ambling, twisting, turning, narrow, cobbled streets of medieval York.

However, there's also an actual lane called The Shambles, which is considered to be one of the best preserved medieval streets in Europe. It even has a mention in the Doomsday Book (commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086). The street that you can visit now has been modernized since then with buildings from the 14th and 15th centuries. (Modern is as modern does, eh?)

The name, Shambles, is Anglo-Saxon in origin; shammel meaning shelves, and stands for the shelves that were commonly found in most open-front shops.

The street had many butcher's shops, their homes, and also slaughterhouses. The meat was hung up on meat-hooks for sale on the outside of the shops with smaller pieces set out in shop window shelves for display. Lacking a sanitation system, the pavements of the street were raised on either side of the street to provide a channel for washing off the blood and offal that naturally ended up on the street.

The winding lanes, which surround The Shambles, are so narrow in spots that if you walk down the lane with your arms outstretched, you can touch the buildings on either side of the lane. This is not a design by a drunk architect, a resettling of buildings over time, or the building McMansions in tiny spaces. Medieval towns were deliberately built like this.

In The Shambles, the overhanging timbered fronts of houses were close-set on purpose to protect the wattle-n-daub walls below and also to prevent the meat from spoiling due to inclement weather.

So there you have it. The next time you visit York, be sure to include this spot in your itinerary of places to see.

Picture Day Friday: Medieval Courtiers

Picture Day Friday: Medieval Courtier

Oldest Piece of Paper in Oxford from 1335

According to Merton College, the oldest piece of paper in Oxford University dates from 1335. It had been discovered in the nineteenth century but had been lost in the archives due to inadequate record-keeping. In addition, it had gotten mixed up in a large collection (think: thousands) of medieval documents. Luckily, conservators Jane Eagan and Andrew Honey found it during their preparation of items for the college's spring library exhibition, Merton 1264, to commemorate the college's 750th birthday this year.

Since paper-making wasn't introduced to northern Europe until the late fourteenth century, the paper itself is suspected to have come from Italy, France or Spain, or perhaps even the eastern Mediterranean.

What does the document say? "It is one of a number of supporting documents attached to the account roll of John de Viliers, bursar in 1334-5, and comprises a list of luxury foodstuffs, including rice, sugar, spices, and dried fruit."

Below images are copyrighted by the Merton College of Oxford University and used with permission. Click on each image to see if you can decipher any words. Look for gynger and raysins.

Picture Day Friday: Medieval Royalty

Medieval Movies

The esteemed blog Medievalists have compiled an extensive list of medieval-themed movies released in recent years. I've been scrolling through the list and adding them to my Netflix (already overly long) queue. I thought you readers of my blog might be similarly interested. So I'm the link up here.

Medieval Valentine's Day Terms of Endearments

Wish to distinguish your Valentine's Day compliments and endearments from the riffraff? How about polishing up your knowledge of Middle English? The Clerk of Oxford offers two lists here and here.

After reading those posts, you should be able to put something like this together:

myn lykyng, of alle women fairest to behold — the one I delight in, [you] are the fairest of all women to behold

or

dearling, my sweet leof — darling, my sweet life

or

This hevy lif I lede, lo, for your sake
Thogh ye therof in no wyse hede take,
Myn hertes lady and hool my lyves quene.

Documentary on Illuminated Books of Hours from Bruges

The Public Library of Bruges, Belgium presents the following documentary-style brief video about its various medieval Books of Hours. The Biekorf branch of the libraryis known for its collection of Cistercian manuscripts from Ten Duinen en Ter Doest has 21 medieval Books of Hours.

Medieval Chronicle Call for Papers

The Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at The University of Liverpool will be hosting the 7th International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle July 7–10, 2014.

Papers are invited in English, French, or German in accordance with the following main themes:

Chronicle: history or literature?

The chronicle as a historiographical and/or literary genre; genre identification; genre confusion and genre influence; typologies of chronicle; classification; conventions (historiographical, literary or otherwise) and topoi.

The function of the chronicle

The function of chronicles in society; contexts historical, literary and social; patronage; reception of the text(s); literacy; orality; performance.

The form of the chronicle

The language(s) of the chronicle; inter-relationships of chronicles in multiple languages; prose and/or verse chronicles; manuscript traditions and dissemination; the arrangement of the text.

The chronicle and the representation of the past

How chronicles record the past; the relationship with ‘time’; how the reality of the past is encapsulated in the literary form of the chronicle; how chronicles explain the past; motivations given to historical actors; the role of the Divine.

Art and Text in the chronicle

How art functions in manuscripts of chronicles; do manuscript illuminations illustrate the texts or do they provide a different discourse that amplifies, re-enforces or contradicts the verbal text; origin and production of illuminations; relationships between author(s), scribe(s) and illuminator(s).

For further information, please email the conference organizers at medchron@liverpool.ac.uk.

What Not To Wear...11th Century Style

Gale R. Owen-Crocker of Medievalists.net has a great post on how the clothes of the guys in the Bayeux Tapestry often depicts the status and character of the men involved.

For example, "We then Guy [Count of Ponthieu,(d.1100)] being confronted by William’s messengers who look bigger and more intimidating then the men from Ponthieu. Guy is now shown wearing a cloak over an embroidered tunic with colorful yellow and green garters and carrying an axe. Owen-Crocker believes that the tunic he is wearing was made of fur, making the count look decadent and wimpy."

The post's definitely worth a read.