Lisa Fagin Davis

Definitely.

Fantastic!

In the meantime, Andrew Hughes is my go-to for details like Psalm order, combined with a Liber Usualis.

I'll be discussing a lot of this in my forthcoming textbook on medieval manuscript studies, including several video walk-throughs of books of hours and other liturgical manuscripts.

Meet me in Charlottesville the week of June 1 and let's do some Latin paleography! We'll cover literacy, attribution, and description from New Roman Cursive to Humanistic Bookhand. Apply by Feb. 17!

Our money was on Damon, Affleck, or Wahlberg. Bon Jovi was defintely not on the Bingo card!

I love this! Here I am, hanging out at the intersection of Archaeology, Classical Studies, Academia, and Library Science. Zoom in, and there are my people! Interesting to see who lands near me whom I wasn't already following (but now am!) bluesky-map.theo.io

A century later, three literary classics go head-to-head - The Boston Globe This year's Hundred-Year Book Debate pits Winnie-the-Pooh against Hughes and Hemingway.

Happening tomorrow night at the Boston Public Library! Join @associatesbpl.bsky.social in person or online and vote for your favorite. The event will be MC'd by the dazzling Kennedy Elsey from Mix 104.1. Don't miss it! Get your free tickets here: www.associatesbpl.org/events-and-p...

This is the way.

So...how soon until pitchers and catchers report?

I truly love teaching at Rare Book School, although I'm WRECKED by the end of the week!

In more #SuperbOwl medieval content, here's a very #BadBunny:

(for more, see www.bl.uk/stories/blog...)

It's that time again...Happy #SuperbOwl Sunday! LET'S GO PATS!

I can indeed read all of those crazy Latin scripts (except for Aquinas, obviously), but I'm a trained professional! Seriously, though, it's just a matter of training your eyes to see and decode different patterns than you are used to.

Awesome!

Gotta love that beagle nose

No question! I'm here speaking more generally about formal calligraphy, but of course will dig a little deeper. Not everyone could be Ibn al-Bawwab!

And then there was that time when Frederick II of Italy apparently decided that Beneventan script was illegible and decreed it couldn't be used in official documents...

I'm not a linguist, but my understanding is that vowels weren't initially necessary in Hebrew or Arabic because transmission was oral and based on memory, at least at first. Eventually, vowel indicators were added to ensure correct pronunciation, although not in the Torah.

Latin: Whether it's New Roman Cursive or Visigothic or Gothic Quadrata or Aquinas' own handwriting, we start with the same fundamental question: "WTAF?" [this is Aquinas, in case you were wondering]

Arabic: Ibn-Muqla, who developed the six post-kufic script types, was called "a prophet in the field
of calligraphy" & his letters were often compared to flowers. [this is a later ms explaining Muqla's rhomboid system for composing letters of correct proportions] iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/vi...

Hebrew: Judah Ibn Tibbon, 13th c: “Hast thou not seen R. Shesheth’s son, a boy of twelve, whose writing so resembles that of his teacher…that the scripts are indistinguishable? ...with attention, intelligence, and practice, anyone can imitate his model." [this is the Sarajevo Haggadah]

Here are a few medieval quotes that exemplify the narratives of Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic paleography: 🧵

Oh of course the stories are much more complicated than that! This is just the setup for a much longer exploration. There are drivers of paleographical change that are religious, political, economic, environmental, aesthetic, cultural, and more.

The medieval Latin alphabet, meanwhile, is a chaos agent. #Truth

In Arabic, the development of the kufic lettering system in the 1st/7th century specifically to record the Qur’an manifests in later centuries as graphic font design, with letters that are carefully and intentionally composed to maximize aesthetics, proportionality, and grace.

In Hebrew, this manifests as a conservative writing system in which scribes are encouraged to copy their exemplars as closely as possible.

Writing a book chapter comparing the narratives of medieval Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic script. Just wrote the following:

The Hebrew and Arabic character sets are scriptural alphabets and so developed a sacrality that the Latin alphabet never achieved. 🧵

So pretty!

MAA 2026 Publication Prizes

We are very pleased to announce the winners of the 2026 Medieval Academy of America Publication Prizes:

The Haskins Medal: Travis Zadeh, Wonders and Rarities: The Marvelous Book That Traveled the World and Mapped the
www.themedievalacademyblog.org/maa-2026-pub...