Outdated materiality in the library

libros cuyas páginas, finalmente, aprendí a cortar, para no comprobar, meses después, que estaban intactos   

books whose pages I at last learned to cut [in advance] so as not to find them still intact months later

- Jorge Luis Borges, El Aleph (my translation)



Even though I am not a book historian per se, I am frequently reminded of various ways in which the book as an object has been designed and made, ways that are no longer in use but which remain within our field of vision because we still make use of books belonging to a bygone era of book-craft. Today was such a day, as I was looking up a few sources in a 1938 volume of Diplomatarium Danicum, a series of edited letters and documents that pertain to medieval Denmark. One of the pages that I needed had evidently not been needed by anyone else at the University of Oslo, because the quire – the sheet folded into pages during the binding of the book – had not yet been cut. As can be seen in the photographs below, this book was a relatively cheap paper-bound volume where the quires were left for the buyer or the reader to cut themselves. It reminded me of the quoted passage in Jorge Luis Borges’ story ‘El Alepth’, in which the narrator recounts the painfulness of seeing the books gifted to the woman he loves lying uncut and therefore unreadable in her house. 

Today was not the first time I encountered such uncut quires, but I decided that the wisest thing to do would be to ask a librarian for help rather than taking the matter into my own hands. (First of all, I do not have a knife of any kind in my office, which I probably should rectify.) The librarian I encountered, a helpful man who has been very good at solving problems for me before, remarked that he was glad that I had not done the cutting myself, which in turn prompted me to suspect that there are those who do things their own way. He first produced a paper knife, but upon closer inspection, seeing that there were several quires that were uncut, he took the book with him to another part of the library to trim the edges of the book and open the quires by simply cutting away the outermost part of the edges where the folds were.

 

When the librarian returned, he expressed delight in the sensation of rubbing one’s finger along a freshly cut edge, so I decided to test it myself right away. And he was right: the smoothness of the trimmed paper – paper that is thicker than what we often encounter in books produced nowadays – was pleasant, both because of the feeling itself but also because this was an unexpected opportunity to come closer to a material aspect of the book that I had not reflected on. I felt that I had been exposed to a part of the practice of book-handling that has been lost to us, but which once was part and parcel of buying and reading books. The whole matter became like a micro-adventure, an object lesson in a historical reading practice. That brief moment of running the flat of my fingertip against the smooth edge of the book gave me a deeper understanding of the materiality of the book in this particular period, the period when books were still cut.           

The librarian made a joke about how this was a case of going into unknown territory, since those particular pages definitely had not been read by anyone at this university. This joke made me realise that on a very small level I did feel a kind of ownership to this book since it was on my prompting that these quires were now opened. The feeling is not serious, of course, but nonetheless a nice reminder that when we handle books the way we do in academia – daily and in many different formats and conditions – we come to appreciate them as more than mere tools of communication and conveying knowledge, but as historical relics in their own right. And if I leave no other mark on the University of Oslo, having made a few more pages of an old collection of edited sources is not a bad legacy. 

Back to the old haunt - a brief note about a workshop in Odense

 

A little over a week ago, I was able to travel back to Odense in order to participate in a workshop on fragments of medieval manuscripts. The occasion was immensely joyous to me for several reasons. Most importantly, I got to meet up with old friends, and I was able to revisit some of the places I used to frequent when I was living there. The workshop was also a great opportunity to present some of the material I started working on during the last year of my PhD, and which I have been dealing with on and off ever since then. In particular, it was a true delight to give my presentation in the research reading room of the university library, where I had conducted quite a lot of my research and where I had gathered most of the material for my work on fragments. Another very pleasant detail was that my colleague and friend - with whom I had worked together on a pilot project right after completing my thesis - had put out a few of the books that had fragments in their bindings, some of which I mentioned in my talk. It was great to see those fragments in the vellum again, and it was very much a nostalgia trip. In one sense the workshop was the culmination of research that has been going on for five years, and it was wonderful to share my findings with colleagues who were able to both appreciate and add to the work that had been done. Additionally, however, the workshop was also a reminder that this work is not yet complete - that there are conclusions that need to be questions, hypotheses that need to be calibrated, and an ever-increasing stream of new fragments that come to light in the library's special collection. In other words, the workshop was a reminder of the long processes in academia - the good type of long processes, the ones that mature thoughts into substance and make things come out in a clearer light. I have been very fortunate to have been able to keep up this kind of long-term work despite the vicissitudes of my professional life in the past five years, and for that I remain very grateful, especially to my friends and colleagues who enable me to conduct this work in the middle of everything else.  

Unfortunately, in all the excitement and the discussions with friends and colleagues, I was sidetracked from the photographing I had hoped to do, so I only have a few pictures to commemorate the event - including the library's strict prohibition against dancing on the tables.  

The living page - marginal notations in the Nuremberg Chronicle

Earlier this week, I went to the reading room of the university library of the University of Southern Denmark to research some of their liturgical fragments. As I was picking up the items I had ordered, I noticed that their copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle was available and I decided to have yet another look through this magnificent historiography. I have leafed through this book several times, but I'm always happy to return to it and notice new details in its beautiful woodcuts. One of the aspects I particularly enjoy about this volume is its many marginal notations. The book belongs to a collection which the university library purchased from Herlufsholm School in Sjælland in 1968, and therefore this volume of the Nuremberg Chronicle has been part of the education of many young Danish boys in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Leafing through these centuries-old pages consequently brings many reminds that these pages are living pages, in that they were actively used and enscribed with notes, presumably to make it easier to find some crucial passage in the preparation for a test or an exam.

The Nuremberg Chronicle

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 38

The reading room of Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

This time I was particularly drawn to this page, which describes the geography and zoology of various parts of the world in a mixture of classical Roman learning and biblical history. As can be seen, this page appears to have held many important pieces of information for a young student, as he (and it must have been a he since Herlufsholm was an all boys school) has taken extensive notes concerning various geographical locations, such as Africa, Ethiopia and Pentapolis (the five North African Roman cities Apollonia, Cyrene, Ptolemais, Taucheira and Berenice). As can be seen in the notation pointing out Africa, the student has also noted the name of Noah's son Cham, traditionally believed to be the one repopulating the African continent after the flood.

 These notations are important pieces of evidence to the reception history of the Nuremberg Chronicle in a specific educational environment, and these notations might be valuable clues into the education at Herlufsholm in the Early Modern Period. And most importantly, they remind us - if any reminder were needed - that old, carefully curated books also once were new and actively used, just as we now make notes in the books of our curricula and reading lists.

Book repair from the past

A few months ago, my colleague Jakob Povl Holck at the university library of University of Southern Denmark sent me a batch of photographs from a book he had recently examined. The main attraction of this book was the liturgical fragment on its cover, and which I might return to in a later blogpost. But I was also struck by the frontispiece of the fragment carrier, which is an edition of Eusebius' Chronicon translated into Latin by Jerome - the Chronicon only survives in translations as the original in Greek has been lost - and which was printed in Paris by the printer Henricus Stephanus, also known as Henri Estienne (1528-98).

As can be seen below, the frontispiece shows a beautiful, if incomplete, reparation in which the central roundel has been reconstructed, and in which the original abbreviation of "eius" has been retained in the missing words written out by pen. Understandably, the elaborate knotwork and fronds have not be recreated, but it is clear that the repair work has been undertaken with great care.

We do not know when the frontispiece was repaired. We do know that the book was kept at Herlufsholm School in Denmark for a long time - although we do not know when it came there - and it is easy to imagine that the tear has happened due to carelessness on the part of a Danish student possibly struggling with the sheer size and weight of the book. It is, however, equally possible that the work has been commissioned by the bibliophile who quite likely purchased this work and then later donated it to the school.

Although scholarly speaking the liturgical fragment of this book holds the greatest fascination for me, and the greatest mysteries, there is something very pleasing about such a repair work as this, and I keep coming back to it.

Eusebius' Chronicon, translated by Jerome

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, RARA L 15

Photo by Jakob Povl Holck

Tu es Petrus - chants for the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul

In two days, June 29, it is the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul, a feast which commemorates both their martyrdoms. This is their primary feast, and is of great importance in the liturgical year. I was reminded of this as I was listening to a mass composed by Palestrina called Missa Tu es Petrus, a mass specifically addressing the history of Peter and to be performed on June 29. Its incipit is taken from Matthew 16:18, where Christ says to Peter: You are Peter, and on this rock [petram] I will build my church. This passage has been of vital importance in the emergence of Rome's primacy in Western Christendom, as the traditional interpretation has been that the site of Peter's martyrdom signifies the location of the heart of the Christian church. This interpretation has not been uncontested, and it did take a long time before Rome ascended to the primary position it eventually came to possess within Latin Christianity.

RARA M 28

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek
Photo by Jakob Povl Holck

Although I have listened to Palestrina's mass several times, today I was reminded of how this mass connects with my own research. During my months as a research assistant at the university library of University of Southern Denmark, one of the medieval manuscript fragments I worked on, RARA M 28, contained texts for the mass for the apostles Peter and Paul, and among the few chants that could be read, though badly damaged by moisture, were two chants that both bear the incipit Tu es Petrus. The exact type of these chants is not yet ascertained, though one of them is most likely a versicle.

 

RARA M 28

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek
Photo by Jakob Povl Holck

RARA M 28

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek
Photo by Jakob Povl Holck

This is, in short, one of those occasions when pleasure and professional life overlap to some degree, which I think to be very common to most medievalists.

Missa Tu es Petrus, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525-94)

Working with liturgical manuscripts, part 12 – Many layers, many languages

One of the great joys of working with liturgical fragments in book bindings is that there is always room for surprise. To be sure, it need not be a big surprise, neither does it have to be all that uncommon, but sometimes you do encounter surprises that adjust your understanding of what you are working on, and remind you that history is a bit more complex than you had realised. In the following blogpost, I wish to present you with one such little surprise which I came across while trying my best to identify the texts of a liturgical fragment that was in a rather poor state, namely Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, RARA K 284, a book whose cover I have written about here.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

The fragment was used as the binding for Zacharias Theobald’s Hussiten Krieg, an account in German about the Hussites in Bohemia and the life and death of Johannes Huss. This edition was printed in Nürnberg in 1621 by Simon Halbmayer. (I am grateful to Jakob Povl Holck at the University Library of University of Southern Denmark for these details.) In the prologue, we see the mixture of German and Latin and the mix of corresponding types that have been used in the printing.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

This blend of Latin and vernacular is something that is typical to encounter when working with these fragments. In this case, there is a blend of languages not only in the typeset and the text, but also in the content of the book versus the binding of the book, containing, as it does, the Latin of liturgical books.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

Across the spine: Herlufsholm, the name of the library where this book was last kept

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

As stated, the cover fragment – and indeed the binding itself – was in a poor state, and in these pictures the poor degree of legibility is not only a matter of the camera’s focus or the light in the room – although these also play a part – but predominantly a matter of how worn the letters and the colours of the manuscript fragment itself are. As we see, even the cover itself is coming apart. Consequently, I had to be very careful, but at the same time I needed to turn and open this book to catch any possible angle in order to uncover even the tiniest strip that could assist me in the identification of the text. Sometimes, one tiny strip showing only one single letter can be the defining factor that allows me just enough to go on when trying to transcribe the text.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

As I was examining the book, however, I became aware of the many layers of the binding itself. It is easy to forget that the fragment(s) used for the cover of the book is only the most visible, and that there are several other fragments that have been used inside the cover, along the spine, or in any other of the many nooks and crannies of a book. There was, however, one reminder of this multi-layered nature of book-bindings, namely a small flap covered in residual glue and torn paper, peeping out on between the cover and the page, protruding from the bottom of the spine.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

On the other end of the page, however, I discovered something I had not anticipated, my little surprise that added a significant amount of excitement to my examination, and one that – in hindsight – quite probably made my eyes bulge in astonishment. I found a little scrap of what looked like paper, containing Hebrew script.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

At first I was dumbfounded, as this was the first time I had encountered Hebrew letters in any of the fragments and bindings I had been examining. As I gathered my wits, however, I realised that this was not as unusual as I at first had thought. After all, early modern printers used a wide array of materials when binding their books, and not only medieval vellum. The vellum seems to have been favoured for the spine and the cover, as vellum is quite strong and can better withstand the pressures and the general wear to which the book is exposed. However, for the inside of the cover, used as a thickener, as it were, it was more common to use paper. This paper often originated from books that had been discarded, such as test printings, botched printings, or books that simply were not selling. The latter is a point to which John Dryden draws our attention when, in the satirical poem “Mack Flecknoe”, he describes the unsold books of what he calls neglected authors as being “Martyrs of pies, and relics of the bum”, referring to how paper was reused as wrapping paper for food, and toilet paper. In short, it is not surprising to find printed paper tucked into the binding to strengthen it. 

What did surprise me, however, was the Hebrew script, and I contacted by colleague Martin Borysek who was then at University of York as a member of the Centre for Medieval Literature. Martin has worked on Hebrew texts, and I turned to him hoping that he could translate what little text I had found. He was very kind welcoming, and told me to send him whatever I had. In the next few days, however, I decided to go back to the book and see if I could unearth a bit more of the text.              

I decided to be a bit less careful in my handling of the book, and I tried to see how the paper covering the inside of the book cover actually was. It turned out to be quite loose.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

 Fortunately, the text available was sufficient to provide something tangible, and Martin wrote back to me, saying that that this was some kind of register, list or index. The combination of Latin and Hebrew, along with numerals and references to tomes and folios, suggested to Martin that this was an example of Christian Hebraism, a text in Hebrew intended for a Christian audience, most likely for educational purposes.  

As it stands now, the multi-layered, multi-lingual binding of RARA K 284 has not been fully transcribed, translated or even identified, but it serves as a good reminder of how these treasure troves can yield a relatively wide variety of languages as well as content. It is also a good reminder of how necessary it is to have colleagues expert in fields relatively far removed from your own expertise, and how necessary it is that those colleagues are kind and welcoming.

Tyco Brahe digitised - notes on a recent digitisation project at the library of University of Southern Denmark

Although I no longer work at the university library of University of Southern Denmark, I have a backlog of things to write and talk about regarding my work there, other projects, and of course the wonderful fragments and books from their special collections. This blogpost is one such blogpost, and it is more an announcement than a blogpost in itself.

 

RARA L 31
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

While I was finishing my own work at the library, there was another project that came to its close and was indeed finished. This was the digitisation of three books by Tyco Brahe that are found in the special collection, and one owned by Roskilde monastery. These books are Epistolarum astronomicarum libri primus, Historia coelestis, and, from Roskilde, De Nova Stella. This project was led and executed by astronomer Majken B. E. Christensen, research librarian Jakob Povl Holck, and astronomer and head librarian Bertil F. Dorch.

 

 
The project has made all these three books available for download in Pdf format, and an overview of the project can be found here (in Danish, but with links to the digitised copies) and also here (in Danish). This digitisation has allowed for primary sources to be freely available, and it has also served as a great first step in the digitisation of the material from the special collection, which will hopefully result in the digitisation of fragments and entire books from the throve of historically significant gems found in the library.

RARA L 31, col. 1

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

 
I was also able to contribute in a small way, since the fragment that was used as a binding to the edition of Epistolarum astronomicarum was one of the fragments I had been researching. I was asked to write a short description of the fragment, and this description (in Danish) can be found here. For those not fluent in Danish, I will summarise the key points of this manuscript here.


The fragment is cut vertically from a liturgical manuscript of uncertain date and provenance (though because it was printed and bound in Denmark it is likely that the manuscript has been used in either Denmark or Norway). The original manuscript was a breviary, and the fragment contains texts for the office for Sundays in the summer season. This can be seen from the indication in the picture above, which points to "in primo nocturno antiphoni", or the antiphons for the first nocturne. This is preceded by a hymn that has traditionally - though probably erroneously - been ascribed to Gregory the Great (d.604). This hymn has a complicated history, but that might be a subject for a future blogpost.  

 RARA L 31

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

 

Working with liturgical manuscripts, part 10 - Breviary or Missal?

One of the primary tasks of my research of the fragments at Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, is to assess - as far as possible - what type of books these fragments once belonged to. This is sometimes a frustratingly difficult question, as there is a wide variety of books used for the various liturgical services. As I have mentioned in a previous blogpost, there are some books that contain material for the mass, such as graduals and missals, and books that contain material for the office, such as breviaries and antiphonaries. With some fragments it is easy enough to assess whether a fragment belongs to the office or the mass, as there are some types of chants that are used exclusively for one type of celebration. In other cases, however, the fragment simply does not contain enough information to be certain. For instance, although text types such as antiphons and responsories are primarily chants belonging to the office cycle, they do also appear in masses.

RARA M 28
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

One such challenge was posed by the fragment shown above, an apparently single-column folio page with water damage and wormholes. Rubrics and some chants made it easy enough to ascertain that the fragment contains texts for the feasts of the birthday of John the Baptist (June 23) and the feast of Peter and Paul (June 29). Due to the large script of the fragment, the page does not contain much information despite its size, and what does appear are texts that are in some cases too general to allow for any conclusion as to whether fragment comes from a missal or from a breviary (or any of the other options). This question was also made difficult by the fact that I was for a long time working only from pictures, and it was not until relatively recently that I had a chance to see the fragment for myself and take a few pictures of my own. 
 

RARA M 28
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

It was then that the question could be answered. I had taken a few pictures but without paying very much attention to the fragment itself, because I had other priorities at the time. But when I had uploaded my pictures and as I was looking through them, I noticed that the texts for the vigil were easier to read than I had thought, and I could even make out a few of the incipits. I also saw that one rubric that I had failed to identified earlier could be read as GR, a responsory for the gradual, a type of chant uniquely belonging to the missal (as seen below just before the blue A). I looked further at the texts for the vigil, and I was able to make out indications for the offertorium, another chant exclusively for the mass, and then a "co" which belongs to the communion, also only found in the celebration of the mass.

RARA M 28
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

It turned out that the answers had been there all along, and I only needed to come closer to the fragment to take some more detailed pictures. It also reminded me how necessary it is to continuously return to the fragments to check and check again, because there are sometimes details that are unclear or difficult to identify at first, but which can appear more clearly the second or third time around. One reason for this hermeneutics of fragments, as it were, is due to a very basic but very important point: In some fragments, certain items might be difficult to identify, especially if you have not encountered them before. Later on, however, as one progresses in the studies of other fragments, one might come across this item in such a condition that it can be identified with greater ease, and it is then possible to return to earlier investigations and fill in the gaps. This is why I have been working on around thirteen different fragments over and over again for four months.

Working with liturgical manuscripts, part 9 - Terribilis est locus iste

One of the many challenges of working with liturgical sources - not only fragments but also complete survivals - is the condensation of information that takes place on the liturgical page. Books containing liturgical material were intended to provide the texts for a wide range of feasts with various degrees of completion. Certain types of books contained only certain chants, such as the antiphonary, so named for its predominant focus on the antiphons, a text sung before and/or after the psalms and, in the case of a saint's feast, often containing material specific to the saint of the day. In other cases, books that contained several types of texts, such as breviaries, could be divided so that one breviary contained the material for the summer season and the other contained the material for the winter season.

Another type of challenge that comes with the compression of information on the liturgical page, is to be able to identify a text when the only identifying feaure is the first word, the so-called incipit. Thanks to the work of numerous academics, there are great databases in place to help identifying chants, such as cantusindex.org and cantus.uwaterloo.ca. Even when the chant is identified, however, there sometimes remains a question of the chant's intertextuality: What does the chant point to, what texts are it meant to invoke?

RARA Musik M 4

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

One example of such intertextuality can be found in the fragment RARA Musik M 4, as seen above. The picture shows a section from the office for the feast of the dedication of a church. This was a feast held on the anniversary of the church's dedication, and the date itself therefore varies from church to church, but the texts were for the most part common to all Latin churches.

The picture shows a responsory, a text which follows the lesson and serves as a response to the theme of the lesson, hence the name. Only the incipit is recorded, but this is also all that is needed, as this is a case of biblical intertextuality that would be well known to most of the literate members of the clerical community. The incipit refers to the exclamation of Jacob after he has wrestled the angel in Genesis 28:17, saying "terribilis est, inquit, locus iste, non est hic aliud nisi domus Dei, et porta caeli", which in the Douay-Rheims edition is translated as: "he said: How terrible is this place! this is no other but the house of God and the gate of heaven". Jacob then takes the stone that served as his pillow during the night, sets it erects, pours oil on it, and renames the place Bethel (previously called Luza).

This quotation should also indicate very clearly why this text is used in chant for the feast of the dedication of a church: When Jacob utters his exclamation, he locates on earth a locality that serves as the house of God, a place where the divine presence is particularly strongly felt. In Christianity, the church is exactly such a place, a house of God where mankind can more easily contemplate and become aware of God and the divine mystery. In this way, Jacob's words, as well as his dedication of Bethel onto God, becomes a typological forerunner for every single church in Christendom, and in singing the responsory Terribilis est, the clerical community binds its own church typologically to Bethel, to the proto-church of the Old Testament, and in this way makes itself a part of the long history of Christendom.

Working with liturgical manuscripts, part 6 - Penmanship practice from pages past

As mentioned in previous blogposts, I'm currently engaged in a projects researching manuscript fragments in bindings from a book collection formerly at Herlufsholm School at Næstved, and purchased by the university library of University of Southern Denmark in 1968. In these relics there are many little details that provide interesting and curious glimpses of the past lives who have at various points been engaged with these books, either with the manuscripts before they were cut up for binding, or with the books in their manuscript bindings. One such case is Jacob, presumably a young boy who studied at Herlufsholm School (founded in 1565 and treated more extensively here), who seems to have practiced his penmanship, and his Latin, in a scrap of residual vellum on the inside of the covers of one of these books.

Inside of the back cover

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA Musik L 43

The book in question is a booklet of musical notation and lyrics by various composers, and its estimated date of print is sometime in the 1580s. It is one of several collections of songs that were kept at the school. We do not, to my knowledge, know how these books were used in the the study of music, whether they were handed out to students or not, but it is clear that young Jacob did have this book in his possession for long enough - and sufficiently out of sight - for him to practice writing his name, first in Latin and then in Danish, both of which were presumably taught at Herlufsholm.

Of Jacob nothing more is known to me at least, although I am sure his name can be located in school registers, and possibly also in other books throughout the collection, serving as evidence for his efforts to write his own name correctly in two languages.

Working with liturgical fragments, part 4 - Saint Stephen on the spine

One of my greatest challenges so far in working with the manuscript fragments of the university library of Southern Denmark, is a collection of seven strips of fragments surviving on the spine of a very thick book. The thickness of the spine has, thankfully, made my task much easier than it otherwise would have been, as that made it necessary for the binder to use thicker strips with more surviving texts. However, most of the strips have been torn from the manuscript pages vertically, providing a cross-section of the texts where the texts only survive by a few words (and sometimes those words are complete). As I'm still working on this particular case, and as it has been a very exciting challenge, I'm going to write about it more completely in a future blogpost. The present blogpost, however, will serve more as an appetiser, showing the most completely surviving string of text, and the only one which has been cut horizontally rather than vertically.

Syddansk universitetsbibliotek, 534.11

This fragment comes, as can be seen, from the top of the spine, and as it is cut horizontally we can make out the text "[pere]unt nostri crimini umbracula. Hodie seculo maris stella [est]". This text is from a sequence, a chant that is sung during the mass. This particular sequence is performed on the feast of of Saint Stephen (December 26). The nature of the chant tells us that the medieval manuscript was either a sequentiary, a missal, or a gradual, which are the types of books containing texts for the mass.

As stated, this little strip of text is the most complete survival of the seven fragments found on this spine. I have at this stage identified several of the remaining fragments, but a lot of work remains to be done with the rest, and I hope to be able to report exciting news in this regard after the Christmas holiday.

Working with liturgical fragments, part 3 - The tiniest fragment

As I'm continuing my work with the liturgical fragments at the library of University of Southern Denmark, I find myself learning more and more about the books from which the fragments come, as well as the texts that they contain. As these fragments mostly come from liturgical material, they contain texts that are common to all of Latin Christendom, and this makes it easier to track down the full text of what survives in perhaps only a line or a few scattered words. In some cases I have learned to expect certain chants to appear together, either one following the other or as part of the same feast. I have also learned just how much it is possible to glean from a very small amount of information. This is part of why working with fragments is at times immensely exciting and rewarding, and it is what sometimes makes you peruse long lists of possible matches in databases, because you know that there is a great possibility that it will pay off.

Other times, however, it becomes clear that there is very little that can be done due to the scarcity of information. One such case became apparent yesterday as I was photographing some of the fragments in the library reading room. I had been given a set of photos taken by a colleague, and once I had exhausted the information available from those pictures I wanted to have a closer look to see if there was anything missing. It turned out that there was indeed something missing, but much more than I had expected.

The fragment in question has the shelfmark RARA Musik L 43 and contains materials for mass, meaning that the original manuscript was likely a missal or a gradual, which are books containing chants for the mass. The book with which the fragment was bound, contained namely a sister volume which had once upon a time been bound in the same way and likely with a fragment from the same manuscript as in the first volume. Of this second fragment, however, only the tiniest shred remained - enough to indicate the type of notation, and that the halved letter was an initial in red and black - possibly a versicle or an antiphon, as can be seen below. Sometimes, although grudgingly, I have to admit that I most likely will never be able to work out which part of the original manuscript this fragment came from. How much information has been lost in this, can be seen when comparing the rich and clear textual material from the surviving fragment of its sister volume, as seen below.

RARA Musik L 43, Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

RARA Musik L 43, Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

Working with liturgical fragments, part 2 - Initial thoughts

As mentioned in my previous blogpost, I'm currently working a lot with fragments of medieval manuscripts, focussing for the most part on liturgical material, in the rare book collection of the library of Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek. Last Friday I went to the reading room where we keep the books with fragments - the so-called fragment carriers - in order to have a closer look at the item called RARA Musik L 44. This is a collection of madrigals bound with a liturgical fragment where one of the folios contains an excerpt from the office for the feast of Visitatio Mariae (July 2).

RARA Musik L 44

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

By the time I went to scrutinise this fragment, I had already been working with pictures of it in order to transcribe the texts and identify them, trying to assess what type of book this is. The pictures had allowed me to identify much of the material, but I still needed to see the fragment in the flesh, and I also wanted to have a closer look at some very charming initials, which I wanted to share with you here. 

The first one is this cheerful little guy who hides in the initial I of the antiphon In montibus sanctis.

RARA Musik L 44

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

The second one is this splendid face protruding from the A initial of yet another antiphon, namely Annunciate salutare.

RARA Musik L 44

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek


The third and final example has been tragically cut in half by the book-binder when the parchment was folded around the edge of the book. I quite like that his visible eye is looking down to examine that which has been lost. I owe this fellow a big thanks, however, because had it not been for the fact that he/she is so clearly hiding in an L, I would not have been able to identify the text of the antiphon Lux orta est, and in so doing made my identification of this office even more secure.

RARA Musik L 44

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

Old books, new beginnings

For the past three years I have been working as a PhD fellow at the Centre for Medieval Literature at University of Southern Denmark in Odense. This job ended with the submission of my PhD thesis on October 02, and I am therefore very pleased to announce that I will be starting in a new job tomorrow, November 01. This job is a four-month position as a research assistant, financed partly by the Centre for Medieval Literature and partly by the University Library, and my job will be to assist in the identification, cataloguing, digitisation and research of a collection of old books which the library purchased from an old boarding school back in the 1960s. This school was founded in the early seventeenth century, and this book collection contains not only a wide array of printed books from the fifteenth century onwards (including some interesting incunabulas), but also - within these printed books - a high, and rising, number of fragments from medieval manuscripts that are in the process of being identified. 

I have only a cursory idea of what the next four months will bring in terms of excitement, tasks, experiences and discoveries, but as I have already been engaged with some of this material during my PhD I do know what potential there is in some of the fragments and some of the incunabulas contained there. I have been very fortunate to be allowed this chance to broaden my horizon and to immerse myself in this treasure trove of old books, and I look forward to communicate these finds as often as I can.

Library Unlocked

Medieval libraries were, of course, not public libraries, for there was no reading public, nor were they lending libraries such as came into existence at the universities.
- The Renaissance of the 12th Century, Charles Homer Haskins

One of the many great historical buildings of York is the archbishop's palace, located at the far end of Deanery Park and currently housing the York Minster Library. Being a part of the York University Library system - which also includes the King's Manor Library and the JBM - I was occasionally directed hither in the course of my research. The general collection - one of four different collections - is found on the first floor of the palace, situated in a lofty room with bookshelves reaching for the ceiling, containing books on a large number of topics any Medievalist might find interesting. Having endured the monstrous architecture of the JBM and the creaking floors of King's Manor Library it was a relief to walk in a real, archetypal English library that had the ambience I was expecting.

These days there is an exhibition at the Library called "Unlocked!", aiming to put some of the Library's many treasures on display. The selection ranges from matters of primarily local interest to manuscript illuminations and other historical curiosities, and I'm convinced any history enthusiast will find it worth his or her while. For a brief presentation of the exhibition I refer you to York Minster Library's facebook page where there is a short introductory video.