Manuscript Studies: Volume 4, Issue 2
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11/15/2019
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Publication Multispectral Recovery of a Fragment of Richard FitzRalph’s Summa de Questionibus Armenorum from University of Rochester, D.460 1000-03(2020-10-26) Huskin, Kyle Ann; Zawacki, Alexander J.; Heyworth, GregoryMultispectral imaging—the process of obtaining image data from a range of both visible and invisible wavelengths—is a new frontier in medieval studies, raising the possibility of recovering damaged or palimpsested texts that have been illegible for centuries. In this paper we show the remarkable results of applying this technology to University of X, MS D.460 1000-003, a previously unidentified single-folio fragment that was gifted to the university in 1968. Formerly used as a limp vellum binding for a seventeenth-century volume, the text has become so worn that it is all but completely unreadable to the naked eye. The fragment has consequently received little scholarly attention prior to our investigation. Our team recovered nearly all of the lost text and identified the fragment as an excerpt from Richard FitzRalph’s Summa de Questionibus Armenorum. Although this text survives in 45 other manuscripts and fragments, our discovery is highly significant because the Rochester fragment is the only copy of any of FitzRalph’s works in a non-European collection. Moreover, the fragment, whose handwriting dates to no later than 1370, may be the oldest extant copy of the Summa by at least half a decade. We present the process of this discovery, our conclusions about the text, and the potential for multispectral imaging to unlock new information hidden in known but understudied fragments held in archival collections around the world.Publication Breaking and Remaking Scripture: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Hornby-Cockerell Bible(2020-10-26) Johnson, Eric JThis article examines the now fragmented early-13th century Hornby-Cockerell Bible from a variety of perspectives, including an overview of its known provenance history as a complete codex between 1880 and 1981, it's subsequent breaking for profit and dispersal of its leaves around the world, and the specific--and peculiar--motivations behind the codex's destruction. The essay also includes an analysis of the manuscript within the larger context of Bible production and use in the early-13th century, including an examination of its textual content and organization, its illuminated contents, and direct evidence of medieval reader activity preserved in marginal notes, nota bene marks, and doodles. Altogether, the article explores how Scripture, as presented and expressed in this particular manuscript, has been repackaged and revalued throughout history, from its creation as a usable medieval text, to its conversion into individual, single-folio units for sale, and its gradual reaggregation and recognition as a rare and dynamic witness to the complex evolution of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Also included is an appendix recording the textual and illuminated content, current location, and individual provenance histories of the 235 (of 440) surviving leaves the author has located or traced.Publication Moralizing the Mass in the Butler Hours(2020-10-26) Smith, Kathryn A.This essay analyzes a group of prefatory pictures and texts in the English Butler Hours (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS W. 105), a richly illuminated, now fragmentary manuscript originally made c. 1340-50 for the Butler family of Wem and Oversley, Shropshire. Focusing first on the Tree of Vices, this essay elucidates that picture's apparent breadth of pictorial reference and offers the first transcriptions and translations of some of the Anglo-Norman French moralizing couplets that enrich its visual program. The essay then widens its focus, examining the visual-verbal "operations" of the Tree of Vices, its semantic relationships with other pictures and texts in the preface, including miniatures of the Crucifixion, Holy Face, Tree of Life, and Butler family at Mass, as well as the remnants of the Office of the Holy Face. This group of pictures and texts are shown to function as an intricately interconnected, deftly personalized devotional tool and vehicle for penitent self-scrutiny.Publication Labeculæ Vivæ: Building a Reference Library of Stains for Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts(2020-10-26) Campagnolo, Alberto; Connelly, Erin; Wacha, HeatherStains on manuscripts are signs indicative of their past lives left by time and usage. Reading these signals in concert with conventional information gathered from manuscripts can add to our understanding of the history and use of an object. This project, supported by a microgrant from the Council on Library and Information Resources, and run as a preliminary pilot study, provides an identified, open-access database of a number of commonly found stains in order to help researchers answer questions such as manuscript provenance, transmission, material culture, as well as scientific applications for arts questions and the innovative uses of multispectral imaging to acquire new knowledge. This paper presents the methodology and the results of the investigation and demonstrates best practices using the database for a diverse audience of scholars.Publication Visualizing Codicologically and Textually Complex Manuscripts(2020-10-26) Dorofeeva, AnnaThis article presents the collation map, a new diagrammatic method for visually mapping the texts of complex medieval Western manuscripts against their material structures. It argues that the collation map is a more useful tool for understanding the collation of codicologically and textually complex manuscripts than collation formulae – currently the most frequently used method of representing collation. Four reasons for this are explored: one, the map provides a visual representation of the manuscript’s overall structure at a glance by showing the whole manuscript on a single page; two, it provides an instant overview of the size and spread of texts between quires, recognizing the importance of manuscript contents both for collation and for the growing movement to view manuscript books as whole objects; three, it is a useful working aid when examining digital manuscripts, and an essential aid to scholarship in an increasingly digital and international environment; and four, unlike formulae, the collation map avoids prescribing a set of theoretical standards or a national system. The article couches these discussions within the context of the full range of published work in theoretical codicology.Publication Clockwise–Counterclockwise: Calligraphic Frames in Sephardic Hebrew Bibles and Their Roots in Mediterranean Culture(2020-10-26) Halperin, Dalia-RuthMost Near Eastern and Sefardi Bible manuscripts feature calligraphic frames around many of their carpet pages, and in Sefardi Iberian manuscripts they are frequently found surrounding the Temple Implement pages, which are unique to the region. The present essay traces the development of this scribal art in the Iberian Peninsula and the way that it evolved into a regional phenomenon that mirrors cultural interests and influences. I also discuss its origins in Hebrew Near Eastern manuscripts and further demonstrate the cultural roots and origins of this scribal phenomenon in the surrounding Byzantine and Islamic cultures.Publication Two Unusual Mind Diagrams in a Late Fifteenth-Century Manuscript (UPenn Schoenberg Collection, LJS 429)(2020-10-26) Carruthers, Mary J.University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 429, is a small booklet containing materials of natural philosophy, chiefly related to the effects of cosmic forces on human biology. Two of its diagrams illustrate the mentalizing process of the Aristotelian-Thomist psychology anima sensitiva, or the process through which sensory experience is formed as a mental perception. This essay points out the ways in which these diagrams differ from a standard (Thomist) medieval model of Mind. During the very late Middle Ages, the analysis of Mind as anima sensitiva and mens appears to shift from being action-based (analysed in terms of abilities and powers) to being substantive-based (analysed in terms of substantial agents using material tools). I will suggest that these two diagrams unusually model “faculty psychology” in a way that seems to foreshadow one we associate more with the time of Descartes, and even of Locke and Hume.