Medieval Manuscript Production in the Latin West

Author(s):  
Eltjo Buringh
Author(s):  
Hanna Vorholt

This chapter focuses on two closely related diagrammatic maps of Jerusalem and the Holy Land in two thirteenth-century manuscripts now in Brussels (Bibliothèque Royale, MS IV 462) and London (British Library, MS Harley 658). On the basis of a comparison between the maps and their transmission contexts it is argued that the maps served as didactic tools, aiding the study of biblical history. The layout of the maps is analysed in relation to wider developments in Western medieval manuscript production and learning during the second half of the twelfth and first half of the thirteenth centuries, particularly in relation to the emphasis on a more systematic and rigorous structuring of knowledge. The manuscripts are seen as indicative of how topographical information concerning the Holy Land was put to use in biblical study, and of how scholasticism could have influenced the ways in which Jerusalem was represented and perceived.


Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 604
Author(s):  
Barbara Zimbalist

Although the academic study of hagiography continues to flourish, the role of comparative methods within the study of sanctity and the saints remains underutilized. Similarly, while much valuable work on saints and sanctity relies on materialist methodologies, issues of critical bibliography particular to the study of hagiography have not received the theoretical attention they deserve. This essay takes up these two underattended approaches to argue for a comparative materialist approach to hagiography. Through a short case study of the Latin Vita of Lutgard of Aywières (1182–1246) written by the Dominican friar Thomas of Cantimpré (c. 1200–1270), I suggest that comparative material research into the textual history of hagiographic literature can provide us with a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of the production of any specific holy figure, as well as the evolving discourses of sanctity and holiness in general. While this suggestion emerges from my own work on medieval hagiography from the Christian Latin West, it resonates with recent arguments by Sara Ritchey and David DiValerio to call for a materially comparative approach to narratives of holy lives in any religious tradition in any time period. Furthermore, I suggest that medieval studies, and in particular medieval manuscript studies, may have much to offer to scholars of sanctity working in later periods and other settings. Offering a view of material textual scholarship as intrinsically comparative, we may expand our theoretical definitions of the comparative and its possibilities within the study of sanctity.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 509-511
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen

Those of us who work with medieval illustrated manuscripts are often guilty of ignoring the major contributions by medieval Jewish scribes and illuminators or the manuscripts produced for Jewish consumers. To remedy this situation, Milivia Bollati, Flora Cassen, and Marc Michael Epstein here present the most impressive Lombard Haggadah, both by examining its background, purpose, design, and by providing a complete facsimile of the manuscript. Famous Christopher de Hamel (Cambridge) adds a pleasant introduction in which he emphasizes the considerable degree of overlap of Christian and Jewish manuscript production. The Lombard Haggadah is the earliest stand-alone Haggadah and is one of only three illustrated medieval Haggadot still privately owned (Sandra Hindman, 8). This manuscript was on public display in New York in April 2019, and was for sale. <?page nr="510"?>It is not clear to me whether any buyer acquired it.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 541-544
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Bayo

This monograph deals with illuminated manuscripts created in French-speaking regions from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fifteenth century, i.e., from the earliest narratives of Marian miracles written in <?page nr="542"?>Old French to the codices produced at the Burgundian court at the waning of the Middle Ages. Its focus, however, is very specific: it is a systematic analysis of the miniatures depicting both material representations of the Virgin (mainly sculptures, but also icons, panel paintings, altarpieces or reliquaries) and the miracles performed by them, usually as Mary’s reaction to a prayer (or an insult) to one of Her images.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 450-452
Author(s):  
John M. Jeep

Under the somewhat different, certainly intentionally punning title, Unter Druck: Mitteleuropäische Buchmalerei im Zeitalter Gutenbergs / Under Pressure / Printing […] in the Age of Gutenberg, this volume first appeared in German (Lucerne: Quaternio, 2015) to accompany a series of twelve different exhibitions of largely fifteenth-century book illumination across Central Europe. The exhibitions in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland were held, in part overlapping, from September 2015 – March 2017. They were bookended by exhibits in Vienna and Munich (for the latter, see Bilderwelten. Buchmalerei zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Katalogband zu den Ausstellungen in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek vom 13. April 2016 bis 24. Februar 2017, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger et al. Buchmalerei des 15. Jahrhunderts in Mitteleuropa, 3 (Lucerne: Quaternio, 2016). For each of ten somewhat smaller exhibitions a catalogue of uniform size and format was produced; they are, according to the publisher, already out of print. The three editors of the more comprehensive collection, Painting the Page, penned contributions that complement Eberhard König’s study, “Colour for the Black Art,” which traces <?page nr="451"?>the development of ornamentation to the Gutenberg and following printed Bibles. Early printed Bibles, in Latin or in the vernacular, tended only to provide space for initial and marginal, as opposed to full page illumination. These admittedly limited artistic accomplishments often allow for more precise localization of incunabula than other available resources. At the same time, differences and even misunderstandings – such as failure to follow instructions to the illuminator – on occasion lead to fruitful cultural analysis. Finally, printed copies that were never adorned were sometimes in the past thought to be superior, untouched, as it were, by the artistry of the ‘old’ manuscript world. König argues that the study of early printed books, and especially the illuminations they contain, should be celebrated not only as ancillary scholarship, but also as a discipline in its own right.


2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-423
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Edsall

In studies of Pauline reception, most scholars limit themselves to works in the second or early third century (often ending with Irenaeus or the Acts of Paul) and to material from the Latin West and Greek East. Although later Syriac sources are rarely engaged, those who do work on this material have long recognised the importance of Paul's letters for that material. The present argument aims to help broaden the dominant discourse on Pauline reception by attending to early Syriac sources, principally the work of Aphrahat the Persian Sage. I focus in particular on his discussion of baptism and marriage in Dem. 7.18–20, which has confounded scholars over the years. This passage displays a kind of Pauline ‘logic’ indebted to 1 Cor 7.20, which can be discerned among other early Christian applications of that passage in similar contexts, in both East and West.


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