Manuscripts and Palaeography Archive
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Reading the unreadable: New X-ray technology can now read rolled-up scrolls
Posted on May 21, 2013 | No CommentsScientific breakthrough will allow historians to virtually read medieval scrolls to fragile to open. -
Chasing Krüger’s Dream: Studying the Transmission of Classical and Medieval Manuscripts Using Lattice Theory and Information Entropy
Posted on May 17, 2013 | No CommentsNew computational techniques show how modern digital philology is changing the way we think of the transmission of medieval manuscripts through space and time. -
Networking Scribes
Posted on May 5, 2013 | No CommentsThis was the keynote paper given at the Celtic Studies Association of North America Annual Conference at the University of Toronto April 18 - 21, 2013. -
Rare 15th-Century Manuscript of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah purchased by The Israel Museum, Jerusalem and The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Posted on April 30, 2013 | No CommentsThe Mishneh Torah was created by Moses Maimonides (d.1204), and is considered one of the most important documents of medieval Jewish law. -
Signs and Senses: Diagnosis and Prognosis in Early Medieval Pulse and Urine Texts
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No Commentsin which they were made. These early medieval anthologies are quite different from Scholastic anthologies such as the Artkella, which were compiled as curriculum texts for the new, formalized medical instruction of the nascent universities. -
Reconstructing a Late Medieval Irish Library
Posted on April 20, 2013 | No Comments'It is a tricky thing to discuss a library that has not existed for 350 years.' -
Making Books for Profit in Medieval Times
Posted on April 15, 2013 | No CommentsWhat I find most remarkable about the bookish slice of medieval society that I study is not so much the differences between medieval manuscripts and our modern books, but their similarities. -
Teaching the Creed and Articles of Faith in England: Lateran IV to Ignorantia sacerdotum
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsThe broad conclusion of this thesis is that the available evidence shows that the basic principles of Christian doctrine were available both to the lower clergy who would preach and teach the Creed and Articles of Faith and also to the laity who would receive this preaching and instruction. -
Wonders and Wisdom: Anglo-Saxons and the East
Posted on April 11, 2013 | No CommentsWhat the Anglo-Saxons ‘‘knew’’ about Moslems and Jews, and about Babylon and Egypt and India, depended upon Biblical exegesis, saints’ lives, and other texts derived from Latin sources. Numerous Old English texts, as well as Latin versions that circulated and were copied in Anglo-Saxon England, concern Asia; these are quite varied in genre and in content. -
New software program allows dating of medieval manuscripts from popular words
Posted on April 2, 2013 | No Comments'These words have their own life. It’s amazing how we can decipher the date of a document based on the evolution of word usage.' -
Revealing the Early Renaissance: Stories and Secrets in Florentine Art
Posted on March 29, 2013 | No CommentsA symposium held at the Art Gallery of Ontario offered new insights into the artistic community of 14th-century Florence. -
The Hidden Masters of the Middle Ages: the Limbourg Brothers
Posted on March 13, 2013 | No CommentsTheir best known work is the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, which is called the 'most valuable book in the world.' -
Making Manuscripts
Posted on March 13, 2013 | No CommentsA short video on how medieval illuminated manuscripts were made. -
The Liber Vitae of Durham (BL MS Cotton Domitian A. vii): a discussion of its possible context and use in the later middle ages
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsThe Durham Liber Vitae belonged in the later Middle Ages to Durham Cathedral Priory and, to understand its context, the history of the communities which produced it must be understood. -
The Welsh Female Saint: Patterns within a Social Framework
Posted on March 2, 2013 | No CommentsHistoria Divae Monacellae, the Latin Life of Melangell is also comparatively late in composition, with the earliest manuscript being from the 16th century, but possibly drawing on earlier written sources.3 When we look at the availability of written texts relating to male saints the difference in source material is immediately evident. -
Lotions and Potions: Medical Books from the Middle Ages
Posted on February 25, 2013 | No CommentsMedicine existed long before it was a science taught at medieval universities. This lecture takes the audience to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the first medical handbooks were translated from Arabic into Latin, the learned language of the West. -
Was medieval manuscript marginalia pure distraction?
Posted on February 17, 2013 | No CommentsIn medical works, recipe books, herbals and scientific works, it was very common with marginal illustrations, or even full-page illustrations. The illustrations were used as an aid to understand the text, and could be used as help in following steps of a recipe or a medical procedure. -
The speaking cross, the persecuted princess and the murdered earl: the early history of Romsey Abbey
Posted on February 5, 2013 | No CommentsThe Old-English note may have begun life as an endorsement, either to the grant of privileges or (what is perhaps more likely) to the agreement about the woodland belonging to Romsey, a notice of which has become attached to it; it was not uncommon when diplomas were collected into cartularies for such endorsements to be used as ‘headings’ for the text. -
Picturing Gregory: The Evolving Imagery of Canon Law
Posted on February 4, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper surveys images created for the opening of the Liber extra between around 1240 and 1350, from a variety of standpoints: iconography, page layout, patrons and readers - and also suggests possible ideological agendas that might be embedded in the illustrations. -
Of Monks, Medieval Scribes, and Middlemen
Posted on February 3, 2013 | No CommentsThe copying of books was also slow, tedious, and very time-consuming; it took years for a scribe to complete 'a particularly fine manuscript with colored initials and miniature art work.' -
Secret histories of illuminated manuscripts: the MINIARE project
Posted on January 20, 2013 | No CommentsSecret histories of illuminated manuscripts: the MINIARE project From the University of Cambridge An innovative project at the University of Cambridge will uncover some of the hidden histories of illuminated... -
The Great Age of Books: The 14th and 15th Centuries
Posted on January 18, 2013 | No CommentsIn this video, Hobbins discusses his research on the tremendous changes in book production in the late Middle Ages, before the advent of print. -
Dating medieval English charters
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsDeveloping a computer program that can automatically date medieval manuscripts. -
A Christological reading of The Ruin
Posted on December 30, 2012 | No CommentsWe should be aware that the semantic scope of each word may vary drastically and that the reader is influenced by many variables in attaching the meaning to a given word. The question becomes trickier if we take the allegorical viewpoint, because polysemy is concerned with the entire text, not with just a word. Thus, we should not consider the surface meaning of the words, but look more carefully for the covert meanings. -
Early Irish Manuscripts: The Art of the Scribes
Posted on December 30, 2012 | No CommentsThe Irish have always loved words.
