Care for the description of medieval documents

For the 2025 International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, MI, to be held from May 8 to 10, papers are invited for a special hybrid session of the International Society for Medievalist Librarians on The Care and Keeping of Medieval Documents. The official description of the call for papers follows here unchanged: “Cultural heritage professionals at libraries, museums, and other institutions play an active role in ensuring that medieval documents are accessible for researchers and other patrons, but many of these processes remain obscured. People working with medieval manuscripts, incunabula, fragments, and similar items at cultural heritage institutions are invited to shed a light on their behind-the-scenes work. The organizers solicit papers exploring ethical acquisition, metadata issues, conservation concerns, and other topics for this multidisciplinary panel. Case studies highlighting collaborative efforts to research and care for documents are especially encouraged.”

Logo Fragmentarium - Quelle:Frgamentarium - Quelle: https://fragmentarium.ms/

In my view the study of fragments surely is closely connected witt the themes to be addressed by this session. Choices in describing and preserving fragments and their context can immensely influence the way they become accessible and visible for scholars and the general public at large. In the field of fragmentology the coordinated efforts to make Fragmentarium the central hub and portal of a whole discipline, too, have implications and consequences which call for reflection.

The online form of this call for papers for the 2025 session at the ICMS is open until September 15, 2024. Any questions concerning this session can be send to the session organizer, Allie McCormack (allie.mccormack@utah.edu).

Eine Bibliographie zur Paläographie im Netz

Detail einer Handschrift - Quelle: Zotero, Anna DorofeevaAuf dem Hypotheses-Blog Digital Palaeography der Universität Göttingen wird nicht nur berichtet über die dortige Forschungsprojekte im Bereich der Handschriften und Digital Humanities. Jüngst hat Anna Dorofeeva bei Zotero eine Online Bibliographie zur mittelalterlichen lateinischen Paläographie im Netz gestellt. Mit nur etwa 260 Einträgen ist diese Bibliographie jetzt noch ziemlich eingeschränkt. Deswegen ladet Anna Dorofeeva in einem Blogpost in April 2024 interessierte Forscher ein auf Zotero an diese Bibliographie im Aufbau beizutragen. Klaus Graf bedauerte am 6. Juni 2024 auf Archivalia daß jetzt noch Verlinkungen in dieser Bibliographie fehlen. An die Arbeit also, meldet ihr bei Zotero um mitzumachen! Die Bibliographie wird in englischer Sprache verfasst. Selbstverständlich wird man gebeten einige Richtlinien bei der Bearbeitung und Erweiterung zu folgen. Als Hilfsmittel findet man sogar ein Excelbestand mit der Tag-Liste dieser Bibliographie.

A postscript

In January 2025 the bibliography at Zotero had more than 2,500 entries.

Working on a Handbook of Glossing

Banner GLOSSAM (screenprint) - image source: https;//glossam.ie

Pádraic Moran (University of Galway) is a very active scholar in the field of studying glosses in all their forms and aspects. As a part of the new project Global and Local Scholarship on Annotated Manuscripts (GLOSSAM) he announces a workshop on September 28-29, 2023 at Galway for the authors of the upcoming Handbook of Glossing, one of the four projects within the frame of GLOSSAM. The sheer width of themes covered by the contributors to this workshop is truly impressive, and I will not try to show here only the things particular interesting from my own perspective. Most of the contributors are active within the Network for the Study of Glossing, one of the pillars within GLOSSAM. This handbook will be of great value to all scholars doing research on the history of glosses and glossing practices in many periods and regions. It is possible to attend the meeting or a part of it online via Zoom.

Further constituing elements of the GLOSSAM project are establishing a new digital infrastructure for the study of glossing, a survey of Irish glossed manuscripts, and a study of the European tradition of glosses on Priscian.

Comparing glossing practices

Cover Glossong Practives - source: https://rowman.com/Sometimes a book appears that already with its title and contributing authors – many of them members of the Network for the Study of Glossing – stands out among recent publications, and therefore I am very happy to bring it to your attention. In my view the new volume Glossing practice: Comparative perspectives (Lanham, 2023) edited by Franck Cinato, Aimée Lahaussois and John B. Whitman brings together a critical number of approaches to cultural practices using glosses with a truly global range. The articles in this volume deal for example with glosses to Sanskrit texts, Japanese literature and scientific texts in medieval Europe. This variety of ways to enrich texts with paratext definitely helps to gain broader insight into the way manuscript texts functioned, and more precisely into ways knowledge was and is transmitted. It helps also to define forms of glosses at a much needed more abstract level. Whether dealing with glosses in medieval Europe, be they in Latin or in vernacular languages, elsewhere in the world or in very different periods, you stand to benefit from the contributions in this volume.

Glossing practice: Comparative perspectives, Franck Cinato, Aimée Lahaussois and John B. Whitman (eds.) (Lanham, etc.: Lexington Books, 2023; 272 pp.; ISBN 978-1-7936-1280-9, also available as e-book)

Musical manuscript fragments in archives

Photograph with lituyrgical fragments - source: IRHT

After a period with several lockdowns it is good to see live scholarly events can take place again. The role of medieval fragments in enhancing our knowledge of medieval literature and science is steadily growing. They help very much to make visible what was long thought lost forever or went literally unnoticed. The Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (IRHT) in Paris and Orléans has chosen the title Remembratio codicum: Fragments de manuscrits en archives for a two-day conference in Tours and Angers on June 23 and 24, 2022. This initiative shows clearly the value accorded to fragment research by a major institution for philological research. In particular the musicologists of the IRHT within its Quadrivium program will come into the spotlights.  The parchment of liturgical works were often used as covers for archival registers.

On June 23, 2022 the Archives Départementales d’Indre-et-Loire in Tours will host the first day of the conference. Attention will in particular be given to fragments of liturgical manuscripts. At the AD Indre-et-Loire Yves Le Sage de la Haye created a Répertoire numérique, série I: feuillets et fragments de livres manuscrits avec et sans notation musicale (IXe et XVIe siècle) (2 vol., Tours 2002-2001). On the second day Angers will be the scene, not only the Archives départementales de Maine-et-Loire, but also the Bibliothèque patrimoniale d’Angers. The announcement at the website of the IRHT gives you the names and affiliations of the main contributors from several French and Italian institutions, but alas the link to the program does not work properly. I checked alas in vain at the blog of the IRHT for more information, but you will surely find always other interesting information for philological research.

Discarded and reused documents

Documenti scartati = screenprint program (detail), Università di BolognaLive, hybrid or only online, scholarly events are being organized in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Bologna a hybrid two-day conference will be held on December 2-3, 2021 around the theme Documenti scartati, documenti reimpiegiati. Forme, linguaggi, metodi per nuove prospettive di ricerca [Discarded documents, reused documents. Forms, languages, methods for new research perspectives]. The program of this conference (PDF, 4,8 MB) merits your attention when you are involved in the study of fragments.

The first day of the conference organized by the Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e Italianistica of the Università di Bologna will be devoted to papers concerning documents in Latin from Northern Italy. Themes range from fragments of documents in libraries at Trento used to reinforce book bindings (Adriana Paolini) to fragments of legal documents concerning the region controlled by the Este family (Cristina Solidoro) to a palimpsest manuscript at the Archivio Capitolare di Vercelli (Giacomo Vignodelli) and the reuse of discarded notarial registers in Northern Italy (Marta Mangini).

On the second day you can expect contributions dealing for example with documents from Central and Southern Italy. Simone Allegri will discuss the place of reused documents in the documentary production of the Apostolic Penitentiary. Corinna Drago will look at reused documents in Apulia. The covers of notarial registers made from discarded documents in Salerno are the subject to be presented by Giuliana Capriolo.

The second section on Friday December 3, 2021 will touch other languages. Maura Perani, the creator of many catalogues of Hebrew fragments in Italian archives, will present a typology of reused Hebrew documents from the late fourteenth to the sixteenth century. Giuseppe di Gregorio will discuss fragments in the Byzantine empire. The way Ethiopian documents were reused will be addressed by Alessandro Bausi (Hamburg). The transmission and use of Slavic documents in the Adriatic region is the subject of a paper by Barbara Lomagistro.

The last section concerns uses of digital humanities for studying fragments. Christoph Flüeler (Fribourg) will discuss the problems of design, terminology and searchability for the fragments at the Fragmentarium portal. Francesco Tomasi will look at the phenomenon of documents as vehicles for transmitting knowledge. Fragments of archival records in the holdings of the Archivio Arcivescovile in Bologna and the use of digitization for creating and adding metadata are the theme in the final contribution by Roberta Napoletano. The concluding round table has as its central theme introduced by Maddalena Modesti the relation between traditional ways of looking at reused documents as just parts of shipwrecks on one side, and the impact and benefits of digital knowledge to study such fragments and give them new relevance for scholarly research. I admit I expanded here the very concise description of the theme for the final session to an extent that would be most interesting to discuss. If this makes you curious to attend the conference, do contact the organizing committee (Roberta Napoletano, Cristina Solidoro, and Annafelicia Zuffrano). They will provide also online access to this interesting scholarly event which will be certainly not limited to themes touching medieval Italy.

Éditer les gloses en ligne

Parfois on ne se rend pas compte des choses simples que presque par hasard. Récemment l’édition en ligne des gloses au premier livre des Étymologies d’Isidore de Seville est parue, le fruit du travail de Evina Steinova et Peter Boot. Depuis quelques années j’ai ajouté une section pour les éditions en ligne dans mon blogroll. En voyant le bon nombre des éditions numériques il m’a frappé que l’ordre strictement alphabétique des noms de ces projets n’est pas très utile pour voire rapidement ce qu’existe pour un auteur, texte ou un ensemble des gloses. Que mieux faire que mettre ici simplement les choses dans un ordre plus logique?!

À vrai dire il m’étonne un peu qu’il faut créer une liste pareille ici qu’on aimait bien trouver par exemple sur le site du Network for the Study of Glossing. Pour les gloses en irlandais on peut trouver heureusement un aperçu très détaillé sur le portail merveilleux CODECS. En vue de ce service à suivre pour autres langues et disciplines je donne ici seulement des liens pour quelques projets sur ce territoire. On trouve aussi des projets pour les gloses dans l’Index TITUS (Universität Frankfurt am Main), un thesaurus pour l’ensemble des langues indogermaniques.

Bien-sûr j’ai aussi cherché des projets au Catalogue of Digital Editions (Vienne) et au catalogue du Digital Scholarly Editions de Patrick Sahle, mais il semble qu’on peut trouver les éditions rélevantes surtout dans ce dernier catalogue. Le catalogue de l’Académie des Sciences à Vienne fournit des renseignements pour seulement quatre projets numériques avec des gloses médiévales. Le projet TEI HUB de Philip Allfrey offre un répertoire vaste des éditions et sites web utilisants TEI, mais là ces richesses ne semblent pas aisement cherchable; peut-être on cherche pour ce but aussi directement en GitHub. En quelques cas une édition des gloses n’est qu’un élément dans l’édition complète d’un texte. Il reste donc sûrement un défi de renouveler cette liste provisoire en cherchant dans les grandes répertoires pour rester absolument au courant. Vous êtes invité de me donner des renseignements sur autres projets enfin qu’on peut réaliser une page ici ou chez le Network for the Study of Glossing!

Seulement trois jours après la publication de ce billet j’ai heureusement trouvé la liste bien structurée des éditions créé sur le blogue Les gloses par Franck Cinato. J’ai ajouté tout de suite les ressources qui ont manqués ci-dessous, à savoir l’HyperDonat et le wiki pour les gloses en ancien allemand.

Dans une coopération heureuse Franck Cinato et moi ont préparé ensemble une nouvelle version élargie qui est mise en ligne en janvier 2022 sur le site du Network for the Study of Glossing.

Bible

Glossae Scripturae Sacrae-Electronicae (GLOSS-E) – la Glose ordinaire, la Catena aurea de St. Thomas d’Aquin et la Postilla de Hugo de Saint Cher

Glosaires

The Épinal-Erfurt Glossary Project – édition en cours
The Liber Glossarum. A digital edition (saec. VII-VIII)

Gloses en allemand et saxon

BStK Online – Datenbank der althochdeutschen und altsächsischen Glossenhandschriften
Althochdeutsche Glossen Uuiki

Gloses en irlandais

Early Irish Glossaries Database
Old Irish glosses to Priscian
The Milan Glosses Project
Würzburg Irish Glosses

Isidore de Seville

Glosses to Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, Book 1

Martianus Capella

Glossae in Martianum – Munich – im Moment sind nur die digitalisierte ältere Editionen benutzbar
Glosses on Martianus Capella – Huygens Instituut

Orose

Die Glossen Ekkeharts IV. im Codex Sangallensis 621

Perse

Glossae in Persium

Priscien

Old Irish glosses to Priscian
St Gall Priscian Glosses

Térence

HyperDonat – aussi pour quelques autres textes; accès après registration

Autres projets

Base des données Marginal Scholarship – annotations en marge, c. 800-1000

Summary

This post offers an alphabetically organized list of digital projects with glosses. Readers are kindly invited to add new or unnoticed projects.

Zusammenfassung

In diesem Beitrag findet man eine vorläufig geordnete Liste digitaler Ediitonen von Glossen. Auskünfte über weitere Projekte sind willkommen.

Samenvatting

De toevallige ordening van de digitale projekten met uitgaven van glossen zoals weergegeven in de blogroll wordt hier ingeruild voor een heldere alfabetische ordening. Aanvullingen en bijstellling zijn uiteraard wenselijk en welkom.

The art of reasoning

Startscreen "The art of reasoning" (screenprint)

In December 2020 the Huygens Institute / Institute for Dutch History in Amsterdam launched the virtual exhibit The Art of Reasoning in Medieval Manuscripts. For those familiar with medieval manuscripts and medieval scientific thought the juxtaposition of rational thought and the Middle Ages is hardly new, but alas many people still have a rather different idea of this period, summarized by the expression Dark Ages. The exhibit is an offspring of the research project The Art of Reasoning led by Mariken Teeuwen, working together with Irene O’Daly and Irene van Renswoude, running from 2016 to 2020. In this post I will look in particular at the sections on glosses and diagrams.

Glosses and diagrams

An example of a glossed manuscript

Three differently glossed manuscripts (Leiden, UB, VLF 48, f. 31r; Leiden, UB, BPL 1925, f. 139v; Paris, BnF, Lat. 17806, f. 164) – image: The Art of Reasoning, https://art-of-reasoning.huygens.knaw.nl/techniques.html

Glosses and diagrams form the third section in this exhibit. The other sections focus on rhetoric and dialectic, teachers and students, debate and controversy, and medieval manuscripts. I cannot hide the fact glosses get less attention here than diagrams, but to be honest diagrams have too often been neglected. However, when you see the discussion of the role and use of glosses in the subsection ‘Techniques of reading’ you will with me applaud the way glosses are shown as an integral part of reading and learning. Teeuwen and her colleagues show six roles for glosses, each of them highlighted with telling images form well-chosen medieval manuscripts. Structuring a text is one of the roles of glosses less often mentioned. The variety of glossing comes superbly into view, although legal glosses are absent.

Among the sections about glosses and diagrams I looked also at the use of squares and trees. Medieval lawyers had to deal both with genealogical trees and with another kind of diagrams often dubbed trees, the Arbores affinitatis et consanguinitatis. The late Jean-Baptiste Piggin taught on his blog Macro-Typography and his website how one should be very careful in distinguishing trees from diagrams.

It is illuminating to see how illustrations supported forms of reasoning. Some illustrations received even a nickname, such as the Porphyrian tree. I leave it to your own interests to look at other sections of this exhibit. You should not miss the contribution by Irene van Renswoude on Women and disputation. The section on medieval manuscripts introduces you to fourteen selected manuscripts.

In my view this exhibit is very useful for introducing anyone, not just students and scholars, to medieval science and medieval book illustration. Things might look odd in modern eyes, but this exhibit shows the rationale behind presenting subjects and more particular forms of reasoning in often remarkable ways. The illustrations shown here give you a graphic idea of the ways texts, textual layout and images were fruitfully connected in medieval book production.

 

Fragments in context

Photograph with both manuscript and print fragments - images osurce: Rare Book School, Charlottesville, VA

In view of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences for keeping safe distances it is only natural that also for the study of fragments online events are being organized. I would like to point here to an event to be held by the Rare Book School, Charlottesville, VA, on September 15, 2020, A Fractured Inheritance: The Problems, Challenges, and Opportunities of Collecting Manuscript Fragments. At 17h ET a 75 minute online panel will start at Zoom. Fragmentology still sounds like a neologism, but it has become an umbrella term for a rich variety of activities, concerns and subdisciplines. This event’s panelists are Sumayya Ahmed, Tom Bredehoft, Lisa Fagin Davis, Rose A. McCandless, and Jim Sims. Eric Johnson will be the moderator of the session. Only 300 persons can register for this online panel. It will be broadcast later on the RBS YouTube channel. You will find further information and the link for registration on the web page of this scholarly event.

Logo Rare Book School

Normally the Rare Book School is justly famed for its couses where you can participate in small classes enabling close cooperation with the teaching staff and attention to personal perspectives and questions. Participants receive reading lists in advance and instructions to bring copies of relevant literature. The panelists of this upcoming online session will surely offer food for thought on many subjects touching current research on fragments of manucripts and printed works. Anyway, it is certainly worth your time to look at the programs of RBS Online.

Fragmente digital beschreiben

Umschlag Kursbroschüre Digital beschreiven" (Detail) - Quelle: Universuité Fribourg, www.unifr.ch

Die Beschreibung von Handschriften und Fragmenten ist zuerst ein Auftrag im Bereich etwa der Katalogisierung bzw. Archivierung und zweitens ein Verfahren innerhalb der Kodikologie. Allerdings ergebt sich hier sofort eine Zweideutigkeit mit dem man besonders für Fragmente rechnen muss. Im 21. Jahrhundert ist es dabei für diese Zwecke angemessen sich auch zu orientieren im digitalen Bereich. Die Universität Freiburg / Université Fribourg wird im Sommer unter dem Titel Digital beschreiben – Katalogisierungskurs für mittelalterliche Handschriftenfragmente einen zweitägigen Kurs organisieren. Bei diesem Kurs arbeiten erfreulicherweise Mitarbeiter von e-codices und Fragmentarium mit, besonders Christoph Flüeler und William Duba. Es gibt eine Broschüre zum Download (PDF).

Logo Fragmentarium - Quelle:Frgamentarium - Quelle: https://fragmentarium.ms/

Das Fragmentarium-Projekt hat schon in 2019 ein ähnliches Kursangebot gemacht. Am 27. und 28 August 2020 geht es in Freiburg um mit einander verbundenen Aufgaben, unter anderen um das Erkennen unterschiedlicher Typen bei Fragmenten, die Erfassung digitaler Photographien nach wissenschaftlichen Richtlinien und die sachgerechte Beurteilung von Aufnahmen. Publikationsrechte, die Möglichkeiten für Interoperabilität bei der Wiedergabe von Aufnahmen und praktische Erfahrung mit der Beschreibung nach wissenschaftlichen Richtlinien gehören zu den weiteren Unterteilen des Kurses. Weil man während dem Kurs auch Fragmente beschreiben wird und diese Beschreibungen am Ende auch präsentiert auf der Netzseite von Fragmentarium, gehört eine Einführung zum Fragmentarium zum Kursangebot. Der Kurs richt sich an allen die entweder in Bibliotheken und Archiven mit Fragmenten arbeiten oder diesen Quellenart erforschen. Fragmentologie findet sich als Disziplin tatsächlich auf einer Schnittstelle von Buchgeschichte, Archivwissenschaft, Handschriftenerforschung und Digital Humanities. Man kann sich für den Kurs spätestens am 27. Juli anmelden.

Paratext und Texte des klassischen Altertums

Banner The Celtic Conference in Classics
Am Rande eines Textes kann man vieles entdecken. Manchmal überschreitet man gewisse Grenzen einer Forschungsdisziplin. Es ist darum erfreulich dass der dreizehnte Celtic Conference in Classics ein etwas entferntes Thema hat, namentlich Around the Classics: Paratextual Frame of Latin Classics in the Middle Ages (Lyon, 15.-18. Juli 2020). Auf der Netzseite Fasti Congressuum findet man dazu eine Einladung wie auch auf Calenda. Klassische Texte sind nur selten ganz allein überliefert geworden. Es gibt zum Beispiel Einleitungen, ein Text wird strukturiert in Kapiteln oder es gibt eine Divisio am Anfang. Glossen, das Thema dieses Blogs, gehören auch zum Paratext, und deswegen möchte ich hier diesen Konferenz erwähnen. Bis zum 27. März 2020 kann man Vorschläge für Papers einreichen über aroundtheclassics@gmail.com.

Diese Konferenz findet erst später statt, vermutlich in Juli 2021

A meeting in Utrecht on Digital Humanities

Logo DH2019, UtrechtThis year’s international congress of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) will be held at Utrecht from July 9 to 12, 2019. The main theme of next month’s conference in Utrecht is complexities. In this post I would like to briefly announce this conference. On my legal history blog Rechtsgeschiedenis I have posted a longer contribution about DH2019, ‘De rebus digitalibus: Doing digital legal history’ from which I have taken here some elements.

At the DH2019 the way(s) complex models are created to represent complex realities is to be addressed, as are the manifold questions about digital scholarship itself on a theoretical, social and cultural level. There is a variety of networks and mazes at work in the field of digital humanities. New generations of scholars arrive, with different perspectives and skills. If this sounds almost too much of a good thing for a four-day conference, you will see that some workshops start already on July 8. It is difficult to alert you to particular parts of the program because its variety is really impressive. The main venue of DH2019 is the TivoliVredenburg music center where hosting music from many periods and styles in five concert halls has become regular business.

The ADHO, a platform of a number of organizations for digital humanities, has a number of special interest groups (SIG) which nicely show the sheer width of this field. Apart from libraries and DH currently SIG’s exist for literary stylistics, audiovisual data, global outlook, geospatial software and its uses, and for linked open data. Just looking at these subjects helps you to view digital humanities as a house with many rooms and space for more things to come.

I could not spot any contribution at DH2019 directly dealing with commentaries, glossing or more specifically with medieval legal glosses.However, I did find a lecture about paratext, ‘Laboratoire numérique pour l’étude de paratextes : l’exemple de Tacitus On Line’, to be given by Anna Garcia Fernandez and Isabelle Cogitore. It is up to any scholar to take the plunge and detect the corner or theme of a particular section of such events which seems to be the most promising.

Logo Annotated Books Online

Let me end this announcement with the links to the Digital Humanities Lab of Utrecht University, and to Annotated Books Online where this university and other Dutch institutions cooperate on a platform for digital philology. As for projects and blogs about glosses, I am sure my blogroll holds something for anyone interested in the history of glossing. Creating a section in my blogroll with links for digital humanities is one of the things I propose to do during summer. As for now hopefully there is some solace for you in my 2016 post about medieval manuscripts and digital tools.

Sommaire

Ce billet est un notice bref sur le colloque DH2019 à Utrecht en juillet 2019.

Zusammenfassung

Dieser Beitrag blickt kurzgefasst auf dem DH2019 Konferenz in Utrecht im Monat Juli 2019.

Samenvatting

In deze bijdrage wordt kort het DH2019 congres te Utrecht in juli 2019 aangekondigd.

Glossing from a comparative perspective

Alderik Blom has sent the call for papers for a conference about glosses to be held in Marburg on June 6 and 7, 2019 with the title Glossing from a comparative perspective. It will be a sequel to last year’s international conference in Galway, the first conference of the Network for the Study of Glossing. Among important subjects will be the definitions of glossing within different traditions and the terminologies for glossing. You can download here the call for papers (PDF). The deadline for the submission of proposals is January 15, 2019, to be sent to Alderik Blom, blom@staff.uni-marburg.de.

Pieces of parchment in Utrecht

Cover "Perkament in stukken"On September 20, 2018, the Utrecht Archives (Het Utrechts Archief) opened the exhibition Perkament in stukken [Parchment in pieces] with medieval manuscript fragments from both this institution and the Special Collections of Utrecht University Library. The exhibition and a book about these fragments are the fruit of close cooperation of both institutions. The project came into existence thanks to archivist Henk Hovenkamp who did research on a number of archival records with parchment covers containing medieval texts at a regional archive, the Streekarchivariaat Noordwest-Veluwe at Harderwijk. He got in touch with Bart Jaski, curator of manuscripts at Utrecht University Library. Jaski helped to determine the texts and origin of the fragments in Harderwijk, and started to organize a yearly seminar for students of medieval culture to investigate and describe fragments at Utrecht University Library, soon joined by students of medieval history led by Marco Mostert.

As an archivist at Het Utrechts Archief (HUA) Hovenkamp continued his attention to reused manuscript fragments, crowned with the discovery of the very rare manuscript fragment of De trinitate by the third-century bishop Novatian used as a cover on HUA, Kapittel van St. Marie, inv.no. 406, a register with resolutions of the States of Guelders and decisions of the ducal council between 1475 and 1547. Mostert, Jaski and their students came to inspect this register and other archival records with traces of manuscript fragments or indeed wrapped into parchment.

The title of the exhibition and the book is a pun in Dutch on the word stukken. The pieces (stukken) of parchment often cover archival records, archiefstukken. In the exhibition and the accompanying book which aims at a general public you will mainly find articles written by former students, but a number of medievalists contributed articles as well. Bart Jaski, Marco Mostert and Kaj van Vliet, head archivist of the HUA, provided introductory chapters. Mostert gives a concise history of resarch into medieval fragments and an overview of results in print and a number of current projects. Van Vliet looks at archival collections at the HUA with more fragments, and he compares the presence of manuscripts genres in fragments stemming from collegiate chapters in Utrecht with those from the collection of the St. Paul’s abbey. Els Rose wrote an introduction to liturgical manuscripts, Bram van den Hoven van Genderen contributed an article about a reused papal charter, and Janneke Raaijmakers wrote about a florilegium with texts about saints. Each article shows splendid photographs of fragments. The articles have been grouped around the themes Bible, liturgy, music, theology, law, science, medicine, history, hagiography and literature, with a closing section about material aspects. The fragment of Novatian figures in the contribution of Marian de Heer and Ria Paroubek-Groenewoud, ‘Tegenpaus in Utrecht’ (pp. 110-113).

Glosses appear in a number of articles. I contributed an article about the glosses of the Digest fragment UB Utrecht, ms. fr. 7.67, the very subject of this blog (‘Vroege juridische glossen. Commentaar naast en tussen de regels’ [Early legal glosses. Comments next to and between the lines] (pp. 134-139)). The volumes contains articles about a glossed fragment of the Decretales Gregorii IX, probably written in Toulouse [UB Utrecht, ms. fr. 3.90], a book with in its inside cover a fragment of the Antidotarium Nicolai, a medical treatise [UB Utrecht, Thomaasse RAR 1-54], and a glossed fragment of Lucanus’ Pharsalia [UB Utrecht, ms. fr. 7.35]. On the cover of the book an image of UB Utrecht, ms. fr. 4.69 is shown, a thirteenth-century Codex Justinianus with the glossa ordinaria, and there are illustrations of glossed fragments of the Liber Extra and the Decretum Gratiani as well.

The significance of this cooperation between an archive and a university library in this exhibition and book is shown also by the two articles about a Middle Dutch astronomical treatise from the fourteenth century, the Natuurkunde van het Geheelal [Physics of the Universe]. Femke van Hilten wrote an article about the fragment UB Utrecht, ms. fr. 3.4, discovered in 2012. To this article I could add a notice (Perkament in stukken, pp. 178-179) about another fragment of the same treatise I identified early 2017 at the Utrecht Archives [HUA, Handschriften zonder signaturen, inv.no. 26-14]. It has not been possible to show in the exhibition all fragments discussed in this volume. Many more fragments in Utrecht await further investigation and description. The manuscripts and fragments at Museum Catharijneconvent have been systematically described in the catalogue edited by the late Peter Gumbert and his team [Illustrated Inventory of Medieval Manuscripts in Latin script in the Netherlands I: Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent (Hilversum 2011)].

Perkament in stukken. Teruggevonden middeleeuwse handschriftfragmenten, Bart Jaski, Marco Mostert and Kaj van Vliet (eds.) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2018; Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen, 171; 280 p.; ISBN 978-90-8704-742-9)
Perkament in stukken – Het Utrechts Archief, Hamburgerstraat 28, Utrecht – September 21, 2018 until January 30, 2019

 

 
Zusammenfassung

In diesem Beitrag geht es um eine Ausstellung mit Fragmenten mittelalterlicher Handschriften des Utrechters Archivs und der Universitätsbibliothek Utrecht. Zu dieser Ausstellung gehört auch ein Sammelband mit Aufsatzen, öfter aus Seminararbeiten entstanden. Verschiedene Fragmente sinds glossiert.

Sommaire

Il s’agit dans ce billet d’une exposition aux Archives d’Utrecht en coopération avec la bibliothèque universitaire d’Utrecht qui montre seulement des fragments manuscrits du Moyen Âge. Il y a paru aussi une volume avec des contributions sur ces fragments, beaucoup des eux le fruit des travaux des étudiants. On trouve des gloses dans un nombre des fragments.

Samenvatting

Deze bijdrage betreft de tentoonstelling bij Het Utrechts Archief en de gelijknamige bundel over fragmenten van middeleeuwse handschriften uit Het Utrechts Archief en de Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht. Verschillende bijdragen zijn de vrucht van seminars met studenten. Een aantal fragmenten bevat ook glossen.

The varieties of glossing

This week I received a call for papers from Pádraic Moran (National University of Ireland, Galway) on behalf of the Network for the Study of Glossing about a conference to be held at Galway on June 21-22, 2018 around the theme Glossing cultural change: Comparative perspectives on manuscript annotation, c. 600–1200 CE. It will be the second conference of the network after the first conference in December 2016 at Frankfurt am Main. You can read a report in French about this meeting at the blog Les gloses – Laboratoire des savoirs du haut Moyen Âge.

Rijcklof Hofman (Titus Brandsma Instituut, Nijmegen) who worked with Pádraic Moran on the edition in print and online of the glossed Priscian points to the role of glosses for the study of medieval Roman and canon law, too, and kindly send a second alert to this conference. The call for papers notes the widespread use of glosses in many languages, and you can equally point to the range of disciplines using glosses in some form. With such recommandations I do not hesitate to bring this call for papers to your attention. The deadline for proposals is February 23, 2018, mail: padraic.moran@nuigalway.ie.

Zusammenfassung

Dieser Beitrag vermittelt den Call for papers für einen Konferenz in Juni 2018 des Netzes für die Erforschung von Glossen.

Sommaire

Ce billet annonce un colloque international du réseau pour l’étude des gloses en juin 2018 en Irlande.

Samenvatting

Dit bericht bevat een aankondiging van een internationaal congres georganiseerd door het netwerk voor de bestudering van glossen in juni 2018 in Ierland.