Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures
Welcome to the Medieval Text Manuscripts Blog! This blog highlights what makes our text manuscripts particularly interesting and appealing to us – and (we hope) to you too! Here we explore what these books can tell us about how they were made and used. We also share what we know of their most fascinating and unusual contents, makers, and owners. Some of our discoveries are quite significant, some merely amusing, and some bizarre. All medieval manuscripts have much to reveal to their attentive modern audiences. Follow our blog to learn more about them.
October 14, 2022
Autumn, what does it mean to you? Crisper days and chilly nights, a new palette in the garden, asters, pumpkins? A new academic year? For us at Les Enluminures, it means that it is time for the annual Fall update of the Text Manuscripts Site.
October 19, 2017
This post takes a closer look at what’s in a Book of Hours, which is arguably the most important text of the late Middle Ages. This is why...
April 05, 2017
One of the questions we are asked most frequently about medieval prayer books, especially Books of Hours, is how they were actually used...
March 22, 2017
News flash! Eighteen “new” manuscripts were added to our text manuscripts site last Thursday...
January 31, 2017
Since 1991, Les Enluminures has sold important examples of early drawings both to major public institutions and to private collectors. Today, opportunities to purchase drawings before 1500 are extremely limited...
November 15, 2016
The iconic image of a Hebrew Bible is the Torah Scroll, the Sefer Torah - monumental scrolls containing the entire Pentateuch (the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) that are used for public reading during prayer services...
November 03, 2016
The Dead Sea Scrolls are considered the “most famous manuscript find of all time” and the “greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century.” Today they surely rank as one of the most important and revered literary and religious manuscripts in existence.
October 11, 2016
We usually try to give our blogs a catchy title. In this case, we didn’t have to try very hard. What could be more intriguing than a book called the Secret of Secrets...
May 16, 2016
Anyone who has ever handled medieval manuscripts comes away with a sense of how they bring the past alive in a very human way. In all sorts of manners, manuscripts divulge...
April 20, 2016
Some medieval and Renaissance manuscripts survive in almost pristine condition. There is a special pleasure in turning the pages of manuscripts such as our copy of Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics...
