#manicules

[cuties-in-codices]

elaborate manicules

from the margins of an illustrated manuscript of le roman de renart. northern france, 14th c.

source: Paris, BnF, Français 12584

[internal-clock]

haraldur bernharðsson, 'scribal culture in thirteenth-century iceland' // revolutionary girl utena ep. 22 - 'nemuro memorial hall' // ikuhara and mari kotani, 'disturbing, traversing, borderless, shaking sexuality: the place where revolutionary girl utena was born' / / ep. 14 - 'the boys of the black rose' // six manicules in AM 76 8vo // ''the boys of the black rose' //mark d. jordan, 'the invention of sodomy in christian theology' //ep. 17 - 'the thorns of death' // 'the thorns of death' // 'nemuro memorial hall' // hand of god in the dalby gospel book // 'nemuro memorial hall' // 'the invention of sodomy in christian theology'.

Nemuro and the Monastic

[maniculum]

Off-Beat (Yet On-Theme) Request

I'm trying to get together a collection of nice-looking / interesting / etc. medieval manicules/maniculae to spruce up my classroom presentations. (I plan to trace & vectorize them for ease of use.)

However, with most of the British Library resources still down last I checked, I'm not finding many good ones out there. I figure our Tumblr followers are likelier than most to have some quality manicule images stashed away somewhere, so -- anyone out there able & willing to contribute?

(I'll share the resulting vector files for others to use, if that sweetens the pot any.)

(Also if you happen to know the provenance of any manicules you have on hand,* please share; I'd be interested to know.)

*Pun not intended, but I decided to leave it.

[riesenfeldcenter]

This manicule from Praxis Rerum Criminalium has quite the index finger.

[hdslibrary]

Mini-cule

We are smitten with the tiny pointing hands (aka manicules) in our 1495 edition of sermons by Johannes Tauler. 

Tauler, Johannes. Sermon Des Gross Gelarten in Gnade[n] Erlauchte[n] Doctoris Johannis Thauleri Predigerr Ordens... Durch Cunradum Kachelouen, 1498.

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

JOHANN AMERBACH (ca. 1440-1513)

Noted Basel printer Johann Amerbach was born in Amerbach, Germany, learned his trade in Venice, and worked for a time in the Nuremberg printing house of Anton Koberger before settling in Basel in the 1470s and printing books independently there from 1477-1511. In his extensive correspondence with his old boss Koberger, he expressed his love of craftsmanship and his devotion as a printer, and spoke of “printers’ types so crisp and clear, so much more beautiful than handwriting, that they might even persuade unstudious men to read.” 

During Amerbach’s career, he used about 20 different Gothic types, half a dozen Roman letters (which he was the first to introduce to Basel printing), and five or six Greek fonts. Shown in the first four images is a leaf from Amerbach’s 1487/88 printing of Lectura super V libris Decretalium cum Repertorio Alphonsi de Montalbo by Nicolaus Panormitanus de Tudeschis. This original leaf is included in the 1956 printing of Johann Amerbach by Donald Jackson, designed and hand-printed by Carroll Coleman at his Prairie Press in Iowa City. We hold three copies of this edition, all donations from our good friend Jerry Buff. The medium Gothic on this leaf was first used in the year of this printing and represents the trend at that time of moving away from the larger and more angular blackletter fonts and towards smaller and more rounded Gothics.

The next set of images is from our copy of Amerbach’s 1493 printing of St. Augustine’s Liber Epistolarum, showing the use of one of his several Roman fonts, with a large Gothic face used in this early version of a title page. The type is very even, upright, and well-spaced, and one can see the blank spaces with guide letters meant for a rubricator to complete with their red, calligraphic flourish. Our copy is also replete with marginalia and manicules in a 16th-century hand.

View more posts on type from the 15th century.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts.

[beckerrarebooks]

Is there any better way of marking up text than a manicule? Manicules (the word is Latin for little hand!) show up fairly frequently in early modern texts as a way of indicating passages that readers found noteworthy. 

We found the top example in the Kleine Wundartzney des Lanfranci, a 1528 German edition of the Italian surgeon Lanfranco of Milan’s writings, and the bottom example comes from Johann Wolff’s Lectionum memorabilium et reconditarum. We have to admit that we’re partial to the top manicules - they’re very elegant and graceful!

[seab]

Bookmaking on the distaff side, 1937