#palaeography

I simply can't seem to find reliable sources myself – perhaps such an item type does not exist, but I swear I saw some photos online of purpose-made pouches for easy book access while travelling (tied to a belt, I think).

Absolutely non-urgent ask; you're just the person who I think is most likely to know, or to know someone who does!

I feel like I have previously known more about this, but the only thing coming to mind right now is the Fadden More Psalter, an early Irish manuscript found in a bog which has a kind of wraparound leather cover with straps and horn buttons. The manuscript itself wasn't bound to the cover; the pages are bound together but just stored inside the cover, as I understand it, so it's more of a pouch than a binding. It's also a really interesting one because the cover was lined with papyrus to stiffen it, showing how far-reaching their trade for materials was. There's some info about it on the National Museum of Ireland website; they say there are illustrations in other manuscripts suggesting this kind of cover was used for other manuscripts at the time too.

(Also, check out these pictures of the absolute mess this manuscript was in and how hard conservation was. Oof.)

They also found a leather satchel in the area that might have been used to carry the manuscript. While trying to find more of that, I found this blog post by Erik Kwakkel about medieval book carrying methods -- this might be what you're looking for, perhaps? It sounds like you're looking for a girdle book; here's another post about those. From what I can see, it's more that the binding itself is constructed to allow carrying rather than a separate pouch. Otherwise, I get the impression that they would have used leather satchels a lot of the time, unless it's something really special that's going to have a whole fancy case.

It's possible some of my followers might have more resources on this, though! Alas all my codicology notes from my MA are handwritten and that makes it harder for me to look things up 😅

Until I've learned that Victorian sometimes did the abominable thing called crosswriting and I decided that, in the end, I chose right because deciphering this? Couldn't be me!

So, anyway, there is an ask in all this: have you ever made a post or spoken about how you go about reading and deciphiring all these letters? Any tricks to it? Is it just staring until the words start to make sense, do you use a software?

I need to know, this is driving me crazy and I am now convinced you have some alien brain because... that calligraphy would NOT get past my third grade teacher 😩. Are you human?

Love your work!

Hello! Owww thank you so much for the compliments. ❤️ I haven't done a post about palaeography, but I now want to submit a proposal to do a workshop about it at Terror Camp, in combination with talking about my Fitzjames research. Let's see if that will get accepted! Afterwards I will publish a tutorial online.

What I can say is that when I started out 3 years ago I had never read/transcribed handwritten sources before, and when seeing Fitzjames' handwriting I thought "how am I supposed to be able to read that?! 😭" I was never taught how to do this when I studied Art History, nor during my current Naval History MA.

The thing is that it takes time to get acquainted with somebody's handwriting, and after a while you'll be able to read things that you couldn't before. You start by transcribing the words you can read, and try and recognise the letters in the words you cannot. Sometimes I'll all of a sudden be able to read a word after having stared at it for years! Victory!

I never use software, because A. That feels like cheating to me. B. I tried to put a letter by William Coningham through Transkribus and all I got was gibberish so I'd better do it myself. (Even AI is like Will Con what the hell, man?) C. It feels so rewarding when you've mastered the skill of transcribing horrible handwriting. You did that, not AI! You're not dependant on AI! 👏

okay what did i miss

Mich. Ms. 30, full illumination depicting John the Evangelist, fol. 306v. Gospels and biblical and patristic commentaries. [Northern Greece], May 31, 1430.

Mich. Ms. 13, fol. 1r. Lectionary of the Gospels, fragment. Second half of the 10th c.