A Love Token
February 12, 2016
We’re guessing love is on your mind right now, whether it be a many-splendored thing or full of anxious fear (or both!).
Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures
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.
February 12, 2016
We’re guessing love is on your mind right now, whether it be a many-splendored thing or full of anxious fear (or both!).
February 04, 2016
Aside from the prodigious quantity of snow it deposited on the American East Coast, one of the most notable stories about the recent Winter Storm Jonas was...
January 19, 2016
In most of our encounters with writing on the medieval manuscript page, we know very little about the person who set pen to parchment (or paper) long ago. Their script may tell us a bit about them. Paleographers, those who study early handwriting, can often place and date scribes’ hands on the basis of particular script features...
January 07, 2016
He prophesied a “Sword of of the Lord” poised over the earth. He oversaw the immolation of great works of art and literature in so-called bonfires of the vanities. He brought down the Medici and defied the pope. He was challenged to a trial by fire...
December 21, 2015
Capping our last post on medieval heraldry, this week’s post is dedicated to heraldic headgear and the stories it can tell us. The previous post addressed, among other things, the symbolic meanings and associations linked to the colors of a coat of arms...
December 10, 2015
If called upon to imagine a medieval knight, odds are most of us picture someone looking a bit like the knights in this Arthurian miniature, clad in armor, helmeted, swords drawn for battle. With their visors mostly down, these knights are practically encased in their battle gear...
November 25, 2015
Praised as “the magician of iron,” Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) was also scorned for his “useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower,” which some described as “ridiculous … dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack.” ...
November 17, 2015
Forgotten today, Clothilde Coulaux, was responsible for the writing and illuminating an enchanting Missal dated June 29, 1906. She signed her manuscript, full of literally hundreds of illuminations, on the last folio, “living in the city of Molsheim on the street of Notre-Dame facing the parish church.” ...
October 28, 2015
Page numbers are one of the features of the modern book that we all take for granted since it seems such an essential – and simple – tool. You may be surprised, therefore, to learn that medieval manuscripts do not include page numbers...
October 22, 2015
If you caught our post on faces in the flourishes, you will have seen some of the quirky drawings. What you won’t have seen there, though, are the three places in that book’s margins where we can put a name to a face. In fact, as you can see here, the scribe has done so himself...
