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The Spring 2026 issue of Manuscript Studies (vol. 11.1) is now available in Open Access!

We are pleased to announce the latest issue of Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies. The journal is published semi-annually by SIMS and the University of Pennsylvania Press. All content from this and from previous issues is available for reading and download, completely free of charge, via the Project Muse platform. Follow the link to access the full issue:

The Spring 2026 issue features the following Articles, Annotations, and Reviews:

Articles:

Indic-Siamese Bitexts and Ayutthaya Scribal Culture: Exposition and Exegesis in Three Kham Luang Manuscripts

Tossaphon Sripum, Trent Walker

Through an analysis of the intricate layouts, scripts, and color-coding of three bilingual Thai Buddhist manuscripts, this study reveals how these distinct scribal choices were deployed strategically to distinguish exposition from exegesis and to map the structure of court poetry in visual terms.

“These Lots Never Deceive”: Compiling and Reading the Latin Manuscripts of the Sortes sanctorum

Bruno Schalekamp

By exploring the intricate compilation and reception history of the popular late-antique dice divination text known as the Sortes sanctorum (“lots of the saints”), this article details how the work could serve as a useful pastoral and secular tool for navigating fraught decisions in everyday life.

Of Catalogs, Cupboards, and Chemists: Revising the Handlist of the Ordinal of Alchemy

Lisa H. Cooper

This paper untangles a century of bibliographic misunderstandings and cataloging oversights that have obscured the material history of Thomas Norton’s 1477 Middle English poem, the Ordinal of Alchemy. It includes a newly revised handlist of forty-eight known witnesses of the text.

Adventures in the Animal Archive: New Techniques for the Genetic Analysis of Parchment Manuscripts

Timothy L. Stinson, Melissa K. R. Scheible, Rachael Thomas, Nicholas E. Wagner, Matthew Breen, Benjamin J. Callahan, Kelly Meiklejohn

This piece summarizes an interdisciplinary study that deployed a new and entirely non-destructive brush procedure to extract animal DNA from ninety-one historical manuscripts held at Duke University. The project report shows how parchment can serve as a repository of biological data concerning medieval agricultural history, livestock economies, and trade routes.

Annotations:

Medieval Manuscripts in Marsh’s Library: An Unintended Collection in Dublin’s First Public Library

Laura Cleaver, Danielle Magnusson, Isabel Tookey

By examining the correspondence and acquisition records of Dublin's oldest public library, this article reveals how personal motivations, unexpected opportunities, and historical coincidences led to the accidental preservation of a small but valuable collection of twenty-three medieval codices.

Reviews:

Tributes to Elly Miller: Opening Manuscripts ed. by Stella Panayotova, Lucy Freeman Sandler and Tamar Miller Wang (review)

Anne Rudloff Stanton

Producing Buddhist Sutras in Ninth-Century Tibet: The Sutra of Limitless Life and Its Dunhuang Copies Kept at the British Library by Brandon Dotson and Lewis Doney (review)

George A. Keyworth

Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past by Hannah Weaver (review)

Raluca L. Radulescu

Making Books in Fifteenth-Century Cambridge: William Dyngley’s Patristic Project by Ann Eljenholm Nichols (review)

Mimi Ensley

Florentine Humanistic Manuscripts: Revised and Enlarged List from Albinia C. de la Mare, New Research (1985) by Giovanna Murano (review)

Francesco Marco Aresu

The Codex Borbonicus Veintena Imagery: Visualizing History, Time, and Ritual in Aztec Solar-Year Festivals by Catherine R. DiCesare (review)

Lori Boornazian Diel

The Ottoman Scientific Heritage by Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (review)

The site sits near Søften in eastern Jutland, about 10 kilometers north of modern Aarhus. Excavations by the Moesgaard Museum show a planned production area instead of a normal farming village. The settlement covered at least 100,000 square meters. Most of the work focused on making textiles, though other forms of handwork also took place there.

Animals, Precious Stones, Coins, and Musical Instruments (recto); Animals, Birds, and Plants (verso), 1341, Cleveland Museum of Art: Islamic Art

This is one of several pages that were removed from a unique manuscript of this otherwise unknown work, which bears a colophon stating that it was written by the author and finished “Ramadan, 741” (February 1341). Illustrations on both sides include various animals, trees, and objects such as weapons, musical instruments, and jewels. Size: Overall: 19.7 x 13.5 cm (7 ¾ x 5 5/16 in.) Medium: opaque watercolor, ink and gold on paper

Labyrinth of the Minotaur, Lambertus a S. Audomaro, Saint-Omer, c. 1121

Gold figurine of a man, Frankish, 5th-6th century AD

Brass aquamanile in the form of a lion, Germany, late 14th-early 15th century

Pitcher with Inlaid Figure and Willow Design, 1200s, Cleveland Museum of Art: Korean Art

Representations of the elite’s elegant gatherings also appear on craft art designs, particularly depictions of the four accomplishments celebrated as cultivated pastimes by the scholar-literati elite—that is, playing stringed instruments and chess, and practicing calligraphy and painting. The image on this rare Korean inlaid celadon of two figures sitting together under a tree is comparable to renderings featuring the accomplishment motif of playing chess, or baduk in Korean. Size: Diameter: 14.3 cm (5 5/8 in.); Overall: 20.4 cm (8 1/16 in.) Medium: celadon ware with inlaid white and black slip decoration