Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures

Teaching with original manuscripts

In April 2019 we reached TM 1000 on our website www.textmanuscripts.com. The present publication was created to celebrate both this remarkable milestone and the success of our newest program, Manuscripts in the Curriculum. Sixteen manuscripts from our past inventory and sixteen manuscripts from our current inventory (on an insert of separate cards) together illustrate sixteen major categories of manuscripts for teaching.

PRIMER 10: HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS

Text by Sharon Liberman Mintz and Shaul Seidler-Feller with Laura Light, fully illustrated, in English

Jews have been referred to as one of the “Peoples of the Book” – and with good reason. The Hebrew Scriptures occupy a central place in Jewish cultural and political life and consciousness.

PRIMER 8: BREVIARIES

Text by Laura Light, fully illustrated in English

Breviaries are one of the most common types of manuscript surviving from the later Middle Ages. The introduction to this primer provides a general guide to their history and contents.

PRIMER 9: SCRIPT

Text by Marc Smith and Laura Light

Appreciating and understanding the history of the scripts found in medieval and Renaissance manuscripts can be complicated. This is especially true for the scripts of the later Middle Ages. In this primer we focus on these later scripts, illustrated with thirteen examples dating from the late twelfth century to 1734.

PRIMER 7: DIPLOMATICS

Text by Christopher de Hamel and Ariane Bergeron-Foote, 32 pp., fully illustrated, in English

This primer provides a glimpse into the fascinating field of diplomatics, or the study of documents. Diplomatics is concerned mostly with the study of legal and administrative records through a detailed examination of their physical and textual (including linguistic) characteristics.

PRIMER 5: NEOGOTHIC

Text by Sandra Hindman with Laura Light, fully illustrated, in English

This Primer provides short introduction to a complex subject: how artists, scribes, and publishers in France, England, Germany, and the United States used the remote medieval past to articulate aesthetic principles in the book arts at the dawn of the modern era. We cover the period from about 1840 to about 1920. Although there are thirteen examples in this Primer, many include more than one work.

PRIMER 6: MANUSCRIPT PRODUCTION

Text by Richard H. Rouse (University of California) and Laura Light, 36 pp., fully illustrated, in English

“Manuscript Production,” the sixth volume in our series of “Primers,” addresses the most basic questions: how were manuscripts made? who made them? and even (in one case), how long did it take? None of these questions are necessarily easy to answe, but, as is shown here, the first step toward an answer involves careful study of manuscripts as material artifacts.

PRIMER 4: BESTSELLERS

Text by Pascale Bourgain (Ecole des Chartes) and Laura Light, 36 pp., fully illustrated, in English

“Bestsellers,” the fourth volume in our series of “Primers,” assembles a group of manuscripts that survive in many hundreds of copies to explore the idea of the medieval “bestseller.” Medieval “bestsellers” were the texts considered truly important, and thus preferentially copied, during the Middle Ages. The texts in this collection include some that are still read today, alongside others, of equal significance, that are hardly known even to scholars and almost certainly seldom read.

PRIMER 3: LAW

Text by Susan L'Engle (Saint Louis University) and Ariane Bergeron-Foote, 36 pp., fully illustrated, in English

"Law," the third volume in our series of "Primers," provides an overview of one of the most complex genre of codices of the Middle Ages. The twelve manuscripts present a coherent collection tracking the development of western European law― civil and canon― from Justinian to the sixteenth century.

PRIMER 2: ALCHEMY

Text by Lawrence Principe and Laura Light, 32 pp., fully illustrated, in English

"Alchemy," the second volume in the series of “Primers,” presents ten manuscripts from the collection of Joost R. Ritman in the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam. Professor Principe’s contributions to this volume present a useful up-to-date guide to the often misunderstood subject and argue for the rightful position of alchemy in the development of modern science.

PRIMER 1: SERMONS

Text by Laura Light, 32 pp., fully illustrated, in English

Each small volume in the new series of “Primers,” introduces one genre of medieval manuscripts to a wider audience by providing a brief, general introduction, followed by descriptions of text manuscripts that belong to that genre. Also included is additional pedagogical material appropriate to the subject. "Sermons" is the first one volume in the series.