#palaeographia

[the-mad-medievalist]

Working with manuscripts is one of my favourite aspects of medieval studies because they reveal so much more than the (much more readable, of course) printed text does about the culture surrounding the text. I just love this German ninth-century evangeliary (@bodleianlibs MS Laud Lat. 102). Many German monasteries were founded as the result of Anglo-Saxon mission work and used the Insular script but switched to the Carolingian minuscule when it became the uniform script under Charlemagne. So here, you turn folio 59 from recto to verso, and the text that began in Insular continues in Caroline. 

[the-mad-medievalist]

Spent the afternoon working on my dissertation. It’s about medieval riddles, so here’s one from Aldhelm’s Enigmata which I was working on today (transl. by A.M. Juster): 

From frozen bowels of dewy Earth I’m bred, From woolen fleece with bristles I’m not made. They pull no yarn, no humming threads cascade, No Chinese silkworms weave their yellow thread, I am not plucked from wheels, no stiff combs beat, And yet I’m labelled “clothing” on the street. Long quivers’ arrows do not stir my dread.

If you haven’t gone ahead to translate the Latin solution from the MS, please comment your guesses below 💛

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[the-mad-medievalist]

A translation of the Lord’s Prayer into transliterated Hebrew in a Carolingian manuscript. There are some strange things going on there – not just transliteration, but also the weird word division, for instance. This article goes into more depth about it, suggesting that it was most likely meant to be sung out loud.