Evellum's 'The Making of a Medieval Manuscript'

The Making of a Medieval Manuscript is part of the Evellum Scriptorium Series by Bernard Muir and Nicholas Kennedy. I scanned in the DVD cover so you can read the summaries and blurbs provided.


There is very little information about this series (aside from the advertisements) available to those of us who are in between universities at present and desperately searching for a fix so my access to reviews may seem limited. Because they are. Now I am even more depressed . . . but I digress. The Old English Newsletter has a bibliographical database by which I found that Muir turned out several articles on books of hours and the Exeter MS during the time he worked on that facsimile project. Also a joint project with Kennedy, the facsimile of Bod. Lib. MS Junius 11 was greeted with an review from the Digital Medievalist that include the phrases "outstanding functionality" and "important contribution". In addition to this, Bernard Muir and John Stinson (the bookbinder in the documentary) gave a lecture suspiciously titled The Making of a Medieval Manuscript at the State Lib. of Victoria for their exhibit The Medieval Imagination, which was then made into a podcast and is available--free of charge--here.

The DVD itself contains a +40 min. presentation recording the process of binding a book in medieval fashion. It is narrated with a voice over and there is some appropriate music in the background; good sound quality, clear visuals, and it isn't too much of a teaching tool that you have to stop the video every time they use a technical term. The other marvelous thing about it is the huge slide presentation with more pictures (not just screen shots) that give more detailed shots of the process. The only thing I have reservations about is that it isn't Bischoff's text read aloud: for the perfectionists and specialists, you may want to stop the video and explain more deeply about certain processes and variations involved in the production of a codex (e.g. the difference between insular and continental practices). I really don't have a problem opening my mouth, though, especially when there are visuals to point out and at which it is possible to wildly gesticiulate.

Has anyone used it in their classes? If so, please comment!

[Note on prices: I found it for £20 at the British Library bookshop but it is available from the website for £50. Neener neener.]

British Library Caxtons Online

The British Library Caxtons Online provides an early printed edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, with commentary and transcription. The image resolution and quality of scholarship is excellent.

The De Montfort University at Leicester has hosted and produced this manuscript digitalisation and is working on several others presently in co-operation with the British Library. If you are interested in the study of manuscript digitalisation, you might want to check out their podcast, which contains a discussion of the subject by scholars.

Edited Multimedia

Several web sites take advantage of the internet’s capacity to entertain two or three ways of presenting a single piece of information. These sites make use of text, pictures, sound, and video presentations to help bring medieval manuscripts to a wider audience.

The Medieval Bestiary Project
This project compiles a number of medieval bestiaries and presents the definitions of the animals in comparison to each other, along with the common medieval allegory that often accompanied such descriptions, and a picture of the relevant animal, insect, or stone. This compendium provides a very general look at medieval bestiaries.

Turning the Pages
This is a project by the British Library that combines images of manuscripts with texts/transcripts, and a program that makes it look as if you are actually turning the pages of a manuscript. An excellent idea for people who have trouble seeing the manuscript for what it is when trying to research them online.

Musick’s Monument
So far this is the only project I’ve found that actually uses music along with manuscript images to explain what medieval musical manuscripts contain. There are also Quicktime videos available and--another innovation--iPod wallpapers downloads.

Rossell Hope Robbins Library Projects
It would be a pity to try and use only one of these projects, since they are all helpful. Along with images from many different time periods, this web site shows how medieval manuscripts have perpetuated myths that are popular even now.

National Libraries

Countries often see manuscripts as cultural icons and as national treasures. Books were once incredibly valuable objects, made by hand and with very expensive materials: aside from their monetary value, they carried with them a national identity. To simply possess a shelf full of books was an amazing thing. National libraries still value their medieval manuscripts, but are now trying to save them from deterioration over time and trying to make them available to the public (something very rare, and certainly impossible for their original viewers).

The National Library of Scotland
In addition to more modern manuscripts, this library contains the Murthly Hours (a devotional book of hours) and the Auchinleck Manuscript (lyrics, stories, poetry and prose) reproduced in full, with accompanying commentary, transcription.

The British Library
This library has a conservation and publication program that has made very important manuscripts available to the general public in a display setting that appeals to many. Their “Turning the Pages” program simulates actually turning the pages of a manuscript, and transcriptions, translations, and commentary are available at the click of a button. The images of these manuscripts are high-res and detailed, professional photographs.

Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru (The National Library of Wales)
This library has made available numerous selections and some whole manuscripts in a number of languages, including books of Taliesin, of the Mabinogi, an edition of Chaucer, a miscellany in Middle English, and several historical chronicles. These manuscripts have their own descriptive pages that put them in a historical context.

Bibliothéque Nationale de France
France’s national library contains selections from many medieval manuscripts, including that of Jean of Berry’s book of hours and Gaston Phoebus’ Book of the Hunt, as well as Froissart’s 15th century historical chronicles, an earlier atlas, a scientific work, and a breviary.

Gospels

Bibles in the Middle Ages were usually written in Latin, although translation into common (vernacular) languages was becoming popular as people became more literate.

The Lindisfarne Gospels
The British Library’s “Turning the Pages” display on the Lindisfarne Gospels has shown the immense progress technology has afforded manuscript studies. There has been an incredible amount of research done on these gospels; here is a website that provides some self-tutorials about them. These 8th century gospels are in Latin, but over the Latin script there is what is called a gloss--an explanation or translating assistance in a common language, in this case Old English.

‘The Corpus Irish Gospels’
These gospels are from Corpus Christi College at Oxford University. The scans of this 12th century manuscript are in high resolution and is very simply decorated. The department of Early Manuscripts at Oxford University has many medieval manuscripts that are worth looking at, some of them scientific texts.

Codices Electronici Sangallenses
The Library of St. Gallen has a number of bibles in their collection, which can be found by their search engine--unfortunately, I can’t link directly to them here because of the frames on the website. They are easily found, though, as most of them are labelled “Bible” followed by the texts in the volume.

Latin Vulgate Bible Online
This website exists to help you read the Bible (Jerome’s Vulgate) in Latin; it has search capabilities, two English translations, and tools for saving phrases and verses for later use. It would be a good idea to bookmark this website if you don’t intend to learn Latin seriously but are still interested in being able to recognise specific passages within a manuscript.

The Psalter

Psalms are songs of praise, and 150 (or 151!) of them make up a single book in the Old Testament of the Bible, and one which was often recited by monks and nuns throughout the week. Like books of hours, books of psalms (psalters) could be personal objects but unlike books of hours, psalters were also used in church services or by individuals in a professional capacity.

“Glimpses of Medieval Life”: The Luttrell Psalter
This project by the British Library places selected images online in very high resolution with a good deal of background information. In particular, the Luttrell Psalter is illustrated with figures of every day medieval life; since we normally see aristocratic fashions (just as you would looking in expensive magazines today) this is very unusual and valuable to people who want to know what it was like to live in the Middle Ages.

Digital Scriptorium
This site is a good resource to find images of psalters, but since there are so many the link will take you to the search page. Type in “psalter” in the “Basic Search: Search all” box and see what you come up with!

Codices Electronici Sangallenses
The Library of Saint Galen is another excellent resource; use their search function to find psalters that have been put online. The images and descriptions are of good quality and this library has the advantage of having many completely digitalized manuscripts.

Parallel Latin/English Psalter
This psalter is one that is purely hypertext, but remains an excellent resource because Jerome’s Vulgate text of the Bible was the standard translation from Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew during the Middle Ages. If you have trouble looking at a page of a manuscript, sometimes it is useful to look at a standard text to try and make sense of the script before you.