TextmanuscriptTextmanuscripts - Les Enluminures

les Enluminures

medieval text manuscripts Blog

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.



Modern Love

Heartbroken lovers today don’t need to deal with their grief alone. There are plenty of advice columns and podcasts to go to for help after a breakup ends a relationship...

more »

History Unrolled

It wasn’t easy being king in the Middle Ages. This was a common conclusion drawn in the literature and historical writing of the period...

more »

Meet me at the Fair

The telephone, the Ferris Wheel, the first public toilet, the television, the Eiffel Tower, the incubator, the X-ray machine, even the dishwasher – these are just a few of the “firsts” exhibited at world’s fairs...

more »

Badges of Devotion

One of the questions we are asked most frequently about medieval prayer books, especially Books of Hours, is how they were actually used...

more »

Happy Spring!

News flash! Eighteen “new” manuscripts were added to our text manuscripts site last Thursday...

more »

Hidden in Plain Sight:

Monsters and mythical creatures, birds and beasts, warriors and angels are far from unexpected in the margins of medieval manuscripts, where they supply endlessly variable subjects for marginalia...

more »

Old Master Drawings: 1465 to 1670

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...

more »

Rapscallions and Resolutions

Happy New Year to all of our readers! The year 2017 is full of possibilities – and, we’re guessing, full of resolutions as well...

more »

Gifts of the Past

It seems you can’t go anywhere this time of year without a barrage of advertisements flaunting gifts for everyone on your list...

more »

The Shape of the Thing:

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...

more »



headerDeco