The Manuscript Book in the West

Exciting medieval manuscripts chosen and explained by students of Leiden University's Book and Digital Media Studies Programme

[manuscriptbook]

A Complicated Calendar

The Taymouth Hours (British Library, Yates Thompson MS 13) is famous mainly for its extensive illumination. Folio 4r, above, is a perfect example of that. It’s part of the illustrated calendar at the beginning of the manuscript and shows July.

The medieval calendar looks quite a bit different from our modern one. Where we refer to the dates by number, in the Middle Ages people referred to dates by their specific religious significance. Almost every day commemorates a saint or an event in the life of Christ; this can be seen in the column on the right.

The dates are ordered according to the extremely confusing ancient Roman system of counting back from named reference days: Kalendae, the first day, Nonae, the fifth or seventh, and Idus, the thirteenth or fifteenth. The reference day itself counted as the first day. For example, July 2 would be VI Nonae Julius: the sixth day before Nonae of July.

On the left is a column of Roman numerals (the Golden Numbers), and a column of letters (the Dominical Letters). These were used to locate Sundays and the date of Easter using complicated formulas. The two illustrations indicate the Labour of the Month (reaping) and the zodiac sign of July (Leo).

- Sanne Boomsma

[manuscriptbook]

Buying Favour with a Beautiful Book

This page, from a copy of John Lydgate’s Troy Book (British Library, Royal MS 18 D II, f. 66v), demonstrates that a manuscript can easily be considered beautiful and imposing by contemporary standards on account of the colourful illustrations. Yet, this manuscript may have been even more impressive for the fifteenth-century audience when it was initially composed (additions were added in early sixteenth-century). Because the illustrations of both the miniatures and foliated initials were executed in a wide variety of colours and adorned with gold, the manuscript must have cost a small fortune to produce. Moreover, the detailing in the miniatures points to a labour-intensive production, adding to the manuscript’s worth.

So why would anyone invest in such an expensive book in that time and age? Except for the obvious reasons of displaying prestige and wealth, this manuscript was commissioned for King Henry VI by Sir William Herbert to express his gratitude for being pardoned for his former alliance with the Yorkists. The expensive gift, therefore, was a method to regain trust and return to the ‘good books’ of his king, in addition to saying thanks for not stripping him of his privileges and rank, and especially his life!

- Frans Steven Hensen

[manuscriptbook]

The Rochester Bestiary's Cunning Fox

During the Middle Ages, animal stories were immensely popular throughout Europe. It was believed that animals were given particular characteristics by God to teach humans good conduct and proper faith. Descriptions of animals were sometimes bound together in gorgeous compendiums, of which the thirteenth-century Rochester Bestiary (British Library, Royal MS 12 F. XIII) is a very fine example. The physical characteristics of each animal were usually described in just a few lines, followed by an often lengthy tale to reveal its behaviour. While they were presumably passed off as facts, bestiaries were almost always wildly wrong: the animals’ behaviour was exaggerated and their characteristics were frequently allegorised to reflect Christian morals.

Some of the characteristics bestiaries assigned to particular animals are still widely known. The fox, for example, is still frequently described as a deceitful and untrustworthy animal, which is also illustrated in the Rochester Bestiary (folio 26v). Here, a fox has rolled itself in red mud to appear blood-stained. The scavenging birds are deceived by the appearance of blood, and are immediately killed by the fox on approach. Due to the vivid image, an illiterate peasant could understand the link between the fox and the Devil, who tricks and ensnares his victims as well.

- Floortje van Gameren

[manuscriptbook]

A Shining Psalter

This page is from a psalter (St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 26, p. 13) that was produced in the now-ruined Abbey of Malmesbury, England, in the early fourteenth century. The text is a gothic script in Latin and German, with rubrics and decorative initials dividing the text into smaller parts. While there are no larger illustrations on this page, this manuscript can be called “illuminated” in its truest sense: among the red and blue of the leafy marginal illustrations there is glimmering gold. Another striking feature is the decorated initial B that starts Psalm One on this page, as well as the peculiar human head stemming from one of the marginal decorations above.

A psalter such as this one would usually include the psalms as well as a liturgical calendar and some prayers. It was a medieval must-have book up until the thirteenth century, used both publicly and privately –  in liturgical performance as well as in private devotional reading. The way the psalter was used was later adopted for the Book of Hours, which followed the psalter and related breviary, and largely overtook both in popularity among laypeople from the thirteenth century onward. These kinds of books for private devotional reading would have been the first books that regular (albeit well-to-do) people would have had the chance to own.

- Anna Käyhkö

[manuscriptbook]

Singing in a Late Medieval Church

This manuscript (St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. Sang. 544) written at St Gallen, Switzerland in 1545 contains different kinds of liturgical chants, or ‘plainchant’, including psalms with antiphons, canticles, and hymns. Manuscripts like this would have been used mostly for public devotion during Mass.

This particular folio (1r) is the first folio of the manuscript and starts with a hymn and antiphon with musical notation. The notes are written on a four-line stave – instead of the five-line stave that we use now –  which was used for almost all music at the time this manuscript was produced. This is because chants used in liturgy retained the earlier style of four lines to show the height of notes. Another difference between our modern musical notation and this example of musical notation is the shape of the notes or, as they are technically called, ‘neumes’. The neumes are relatively square, keeping with the Gothic script in which the manuscript is written.

It is important to realize that almost all the music that was written down in the Middle Ages was vocal music and in most cases was performed without instruments. Music played a major part in the religious culture of this time, which is attested to by this manuscript and many others filled with religious and liturgical songs. 

- Sanne Boomsma

[manuscriptbook]

Picking Flowers in a 13th Century Picture Calendar

This is a calendar page for June from a late thirteenth-century Psalter-Hours manuscript (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W.41, 4v), made for a Franciscan community in Cologne. Calendars are quite common in these kinds of books. They were used to keep track of all the religious holidays. The initials KL at the top are an abbreviation of ‘kalens’, the first day of the month. (Now you know where the word calendar comes from!)

Just like nowadays medieval people liked illustrations to go with their calendars. Those illustrations were usually the zodiac signs and/or the labours of the month. This page shows the labour of June: a young man picking flowers. June is associated with harvest and the labour of June usually shows someone reaping wheat. This manuscript was used by Franciscans however, not farmers, so maybe June was the month when they picked the flowers and herbs they needed for seasoning or ointments?

The round form of the illustration represents the circle of life. Every year the same labours are depicted for every month in the calendar, so the years form circles of recurring labours of the months. This is tells us that time was not just perceived as linear in the middle ages.

- Koen Huigen

[manuscriptbook]

The Many-Headed Hydra

The hydra, here depicted with five heads in an early thirteenth-century bestiary (British Library, Royal MS 12 C XIX, f. 13r), is an iconic fictional creature known from Hercules’ twelve labours. This Greek story tells us of a serpent-like creature that is capable of growing two heads when one was lost and that its poison could instantly kill a man. Be that as it may, it might seem odd to find records regarding mythical beasts in a text that describes real animals. The illustration of the hydra has been displayed in a similar fashion as the nonfictional animals, with a variety of colours in combination with gold, signalling its equal importance.

Does this indicate that the medieval audience believed in the serpent’s existence, or is there a more logical reason? Animals in medieval society were often used as symbolic vehicles to denote virtues and vices in religious allegory. Therefore, fictional animals could be used as long as the symbolic value remained, which explains why creatures such as the hydra were depicted and described. 

- Frans Steven Hensen

[manuscriptbook]

Christine de Pizan: Literary Trailblazer

Climbing the social ladder or making a career was a bit more difficult in Medieval Europe than is the case nowadays – especially for women. The Church had a large influence on the position of women: due to the Bible, it was believed that women had to pay for mankind’s expulsion from paradise. Therefore, women had to obey their father and husband, were kept out of public office, and were, with few exceptions, disallowed from wielding authority.

However, there exist some medieval manuscripts which describe the importance of women and moreover, women who step out of their subordinate position. One of these manuscripts is a fifteenth-century The Book of the Queen (British Library, Harley MS 4431), which includes work by Christine de Pizan (1364-c.1430), an Italian-French author. It was unusual that literature was composed by a woman and moreover, that women were put in the spotlight: The Book of the Queen, which shows the author composing the work (above, 4r) marks the contribution of women to society as highly important. As a result, De Pizan is often indicated as the first woman to attack the medieval tradition of literary misogyny.

[manuscriptbook]

The Elegant Simplicity of the St Cuthbert Gospel

This simple page, bare of decoration, is actually one of the most remarkable pages in Western manuscript history. It is in fact a folio (2v) from the St Cuthbert Gospel, also known as the Stonyhurst Gospel (British Library, Add MS 89000), which is the oldest intact European book. The book was apparently tucked away in the coffin of St Cuthbert –  a prominent English saint – from 698 to 1104, after which it was discovered in near perfect condition when St Cuthbert’s remains were moved from his coffin to a new location. The book is currently in the collection of the British Library, who bought it in 2012 for the considerable sum of £9 million.

The book consists of the Gospel of St John, in remarkably clear handwritten script. The script is elegant and simple, with only a few initials and rubrications – only one red initial seen on this page – and has been hailed for its “simple design and perfect execution” (Brown, The Stonyhurst Gospel of Saint John, 1969). The subtle decorative elements of the text never muddle the form of the letters, further attributing to its clarity. Almost all letters are in fact very clear even to a modern reader, and show, overall, how closely tied our basic letter forms can be to those of even the oldest books. All elements of the Cuthbert Gospel – ink, page and binding –  are a testament to how expertly it was made, and how it has survived to this day as a uniquely well-preserved part of European book history.

- Anna Käyhkö

[manuscriptbook]

Medieval Connections to 'Classical Roots'

This manuscript (British Library, Royal MS 20 D I) of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César (‘Ancient history up to Caesar’) is the earliest surviving manuscript of the second redaction of this work. This redaction, like this manuscript, was produced in Naples around 1330-1340. It focuses on the story of Troy, which is no longer taken from Dares, a supposed eyewitness of the fall of Troy, but from the prose version of Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie. As a result, it is much more extensive.

The goal of these types of histories was to join the classical past and the medieval present. The author, therefore, did not always keep historical accuracy in mind if it did not fit his purpose. This allowed nobles to bind themselves and their families to classical founders.

The illuminations in this manuscript are mostly bas-de-page (‘bottom of the page’) scenes, a style of illumination that had its heyday in the fourteenth century. In keeping with the increased importance of the story of Troy, over 120 miniatures have Trojan subjects. This particular folio (167v) contains one such miniature, specifically the famous scene of the Trojan Horse being brought into the city of Troy. 

- Sanne Boomsma

[manuscriptbook]

Can You Hear The Harmony of the Spheres?

The cliché that the medieval Church ruthlessly repressed all science can be quickly argued against with a look at this manuscript, a scientific text book for monks written in late twelfth-century England (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W. 73). It is a compendium of knowledge from early medieval Christian writers including Isidore of Seville, Venerable Bede and Abbo of Fleury. They adapted classical astronomy and astrology to accord with Christian beliefs.

Most of the diagrams in this manuscript are so-called rotae: wheel-shaped schemata. The circle was considered the perfect shape, symbolic of God. The folio above (5r) is about the so-called ‘Harmony of the Spheres’. This is the idea that the seven heavenly bodies (the then-known planets, plus the sun and moon) moved through space according to a musical harmony: the song of our solar system with God as its composer. Between the circles representing the heavenly bodies at the top of the page you can read the words ‘tonus’ and ‘semitiomium’, which are musical intervals known to us as tone and semitone!

Today we know our solar system does not quite operate like this, but the way this manuscript brings harmony to the universe not only through God but also through science is truly moving. 

- Koen Huigen

[manuscriptbook]

A Colourful Canterbury Tales

Get on your horse and trod beside me as I tell you why this copy of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (San Marino, Huntington Library, mssEL 26 C 9) is special. The first thing that catches the eye on this folio (10r) is the foliated initial that covers the entire length of the page to indicate the prologue and the beginning of each story. These initials have been dressed in red, blue, yellow, and a hint of green, which were generally common and “inexpensive”. However, the multiple applications of such initials throughout the text add to the worth of the manuscript. Furthermore, the inclusion of miniatures portraying all twenty-two fictional storytellers in a detailed and multicoloured fashion makes this copy of the Canterbury Tales especially remarkable. These elements not only declare that the manuscript was indeed expensive, the illustrations also give us, the modern reader, a visual (and presumably correct) representation how people from different social classes dressed in this era. As such, the manuscript can be seen as a window through which to glimpse into another time. 

- Frans Steven Hensen

[manuscriptbook]

Fantastical Creatures in The Marvels of the East

Those who consider medieval manuscripts as dull are probably unfamiliar with medieval texts that refer to the Orient. The ninth-century copy of The Marvels of the East in the famous Beowulf manuscript (British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A XV) is probably the best known early text about the Orient. The text reveals the belief in the existence of monstrous races during the Middle Ages and draws upon ancient Greek and Roman traditions of writing on exotic inhabitants of foreign lands. It jumps from marvels in Africa to those in Asia and back again, and describes all kinds of creatures with physical deformities. Some creatures were believed to be gigantic while others were believed to be half-human, half-animal.

One of these creatures is the panotii (f. 104r). The panotii had a large head and ears like fans, almost like the little elephant Dumbo on two feet. It was said that at night, the panotii would spread one ear beneath it and wrap itself with the other to stay warm, and if it saw anyone it took its ears in its hands and fled. The Marvels of the East is full of these entertaining descriptions of strange creatures. Thus, medieval manuscripts are not dull at all!

- Floortje van Gameren

[manuscriptbook]

Worrisome Whales

This beautifully illustrated manuscript page comes from a thirteenth-century Latin bestiary, made in England, and now housed in the collections of the British Library (Harley 3244, f. 61r). The inky gothic script surrounds two images: one of a slightly troubled looking illustrator drawing a somewhat startled looking whale, and another depicting the whale on its own, emerging from the waves. 

The bestiary was a medieval book of animals, the stories of which were used for teaching issues of theology and morality to its reader. Hence we have a reason for the possibly troubled expression of the poor illustrator: in the tradition of the bestiary the whale was seen as a deceitful, monstrous creature, whose nature it was to lure sailors into its mouth and then swallow them. The whale was ultimately an allegory of the Devil, who would lure you into the depths of hell - or in the case of the whale, its belly. Another ability of the whale, according to the bestiary, was tricking sailors into thinking that it is an island. When the sailors then anchored their ship onto the whale and lit a fire for cooking, they would be dragged along and drowned when the whale dove into the depths of the ocean.

- Anna Käyhkö