#medievalmanuscript

Another older tarot card commission "Temperance"

Touching Parchment: Volume 1: Officials and Their Books

"Touching Parchment" culminates 25 years of research on European medieval manuscripts (ca. 1100–1500). By scouring archives and taking more than 900 photographs, Kathryn Rudy documents the visible damage of neglected and undisplayed copies, interpreting the marks of wear that remain. She suggests these signs are not merely damage but are readable evidence of the deep emotional connections and ritualistic gestures people used to engage with the written word.

Manuscript historian Kathryn Rudy from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland is known for taking a forensic approach to studying medieval manuscripts. Renowned for her Dirty Books Project, she introduced a new historical approach by using the densitometer to measure grime and manipulation.

In Touching Parchment, the first of two open-access volumes, Rudy presents the culmination of 25 years of research across European archives. Collecting more than 900 photographs of European medieval manuscripts (ca. 1100–1500)—many of which are reproduced in this book—she argues that these works are often left unexamined since damaged manuscripts are typically not chosen for display. Yet, she asserts that the damage on these manuscripts represents “interpretable marks of wear” and each mark, whether intentionally put there or not, has a story to tell (4). These signs of wear reveal the deep emotional connections people formed with manuscripts, shedding light on the ritualistic gestures they used to engage with the written word.

In Part I, the first chapter serves as an introduction outlining the structure, method, and approach along with how the book relates to its relevant historiography. In “Ways of Touching Manuscripts,” Rudy breaks down her analysis of manuscript damage into the broad categories of “inadvertent wear” and “targeted wear,” each of which has various subcategories (29). The discussion of the targeted wear had much more detail. She talked about depositing wax as place markers and scratching them off, kissing texts, touching images, and sewing curtains to pages among other explanations for visible damage to manuscripts.

Part II, titled “Books and Authority,” begins with Rudy exploring the broader trends of oath-swearing, tracing its evolution from the "Peace of God" movement in 975 to roughly the 14th century—a period spanning four centuries during which the practice of swearing on Gospels and missals gradually replaced using relics. A discussion of coronations and other acts of oath-taking was interestingly used to explain manuscript wear. Chapter Four relates how the history of kissing “images, words, and decoration within books” left physical evidence of wear (85). A history of missals that focused on liturgical practices highlights a shift in the 12th century, when worship became more theatrical, incorporating an increasing number of prescribed religious gestures—many of which are now evident in manuscripts. The next chapter “Swearing: From Gospels to Legal Manuscripts” emphasizes the late medieval expansion of oath-swearing from something concerning only emperors and kings to a practice adopted by the literate public. Legal manuscripts copied images from religious texts and adopted many of the rituals that were once exclusive to the religious sphere. Touching these images in oath-taking ceremonies left smears and other signs of wear that were painstakingly photographed and analyzed. The final chapter reviews the wear on books used in liturgical singing and memorializing the dead. Given the purpose of these manuscripts and the frequent use of ritual liturgical gestures, these books survived with much greater wear compared to other medieval manuscripts.

Overall, many of the chapters could function as stand-alone supplementary texts for a variety of post-secondary courses, spanning disciplines from art to history. Secondary teachers might make use of the hundreds of images to illustrate how people interact with both art and the written word. Its open access ensures that this incredible book can reach and benefit a wide audience.

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Pogoda, ta szelma, mami wzrok. Zsyła na mnie dziką pomroczność. Grają na ścianach dziwne cienie. W szczelinach gomułkowskich bloków kryją się równie tajemnicze, pajęcze sieci. O, jak miło szepcą rycerskie pieśni. Owa osobliwa kombinacja porządków czasowych, każe mi wierzyć, że może żyła tu niegdyś średniowieczna Arachne. Blikuje to piekielne światło; czy ja postradałam zmysły? Niestety nie przychodzą mi do głowy żadne słowiańskie "chansons". Znam jednak pewną, której wspaniałość skradła serca całym pokoleniom:

Roland uderza w krzemienną skałę. Miecz zgrzyta, nie pryska, nie szczerbi się. Kiedy widzi, że nie może go złamać, zaczyna w duszy lamentować nad nim: „Ha, Durendalu, jakiś ty piękny, jaki jasny i biały! Jak słońce lśnisz i płoniesz.

This post was written by Charlie Taylor, a recipient of an Archival Scholar Research Award for the 2021 Spring Semester.

As part of my ASRA research, I’ve explored medieval illuminated manuscripts commissioned by queens of France, including this volume commissioned by Blanche of Castile. Blanche’s husband, Louis VIII of France, died when his heir was just 12 years old, and Blanche served as regent until Louis IX was old enough to take the throne. During her regency, which lasted from 1226 to 1234, she commissioned the Biblia de San Luis. The book is structured as a Bible moralisée, or moralized bible, intended to educate a young Louis on Christian doctrine and proper kingship.

(Above) Excerpt from 2001 reproduction of Biblia de San Luis.  

The page pictured above comes from a facsimile — a close reproduction made for scholarly purposes — of the Biblia de San Luis in Pitt’s Frick Fine Arts Library. The page contains two columns of text accompanied by illustrations, some of which depict scenes from the book of Genesis: at top left, God strolls with Adam in the Garden of Eden; at top right, God removes a rib from Adam to create Eve.   

However, not every illustration shows a scene from Genesis. If we look again at the top right, immediately below the creation of Eve, we see Christ on the cross, with a figure emerging from a wound in his chest. What is Jesus doing in the book of Genesis? Why does explicitly Christian imagery appear on this page, when the life of Christ occurred centuries after the Hebrew Bible was written? Why does God have a cruciform halo — a halo containing the image of a cross?

Bibles moralisées don’t contain the entire text of the bible front to back; rather, they take stories from the bible and provide commentary on them, explaining their relationship to Christian doctrine. In the Biblia de San Luis, each roundel forms a pair with the one immediately below it, with the first scene taken from the bible and the second offering commentary.

It is important to note that the commentary in this bible represents a Christian-centric worldview and often dismisses Jewish readings of the text. The Biblia de San Luis treats the events of the Hebrew Bible as natural precursors to the events of the Christian Bible. Typology, as a form of commentary, takes certain events to foreshadow other events; this book asserts a typology in the creation of Eve and the creation of the Christian Church. In the second roundel, Ecclesia, a personification of the Church, emerges from Christ’s chest. The accompanying text explains that the scene from Genesis, in which God puts Adam to sleep and makes Eve from his rib, signifies God putting Christ to rest on the cross and pulling the Church from his side. Here, Christian doctrine (and the Church as an institution) becomes central to understanding the book of Genesis, pushing the story’s Jewish origins to the margins.

Works cited

William of Auvernge and Ramón Gonzálvez Ruiz. Biblia de San Luis. Barcelona: M. Moleiro, 2001.