INSULAR

A tale of two parchments In this talk, Dr. Jiří Vnouček discusses differences in species choice and membrane preparation of 'Insular' and 'Continental' parchment used for book-making in the early Middle Ages.

Next Wednesday 8th October, 12.30-1.30: Jiří Vnouček on "A Tale of Two Parchments" - insular and continental parchment preparation.
In person: @bodleian.ox.ac.uk Weston Library, Lecture Theatre
Or livestreamed.
Free: book here visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/oct25/...

xps, for christus. ihs is for iesus

Images from the Codex Usserianus Primus Gospel of Mark: digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/work...

Here is a controversial - or maybe not so controversial? - #palaeography question: how did this scribe do the rolled tops on ascenders and the letter i?

Was it by pushing the pen up and to the left, then down and to the right?

Or were these additional downward strokes?

We're hiring for e-codices. The position is modest, but, hopefully it'll be the start of something big.

www.unifr.ch/sp/en/open-p...

I recently finished cataloging the Arabic-script manuscripts of the National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over 750 manuscripts in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Bosnian, free to view in the HMML Reading Room
w3id.org/vhmml/readin...

Congratulations to our Leicester early medieval colleague, Professor Joanna Story (@insularmss.bsky.social), on being elected a Fellow of the British Academy!

And marvellous Jo Story @uniofleicester.bsky.social too: fantastic and so well-deserved.
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/fellows/joan...

Our PI Prof. Joanna Story is one of the newly elected Fellows! Her work on early medieval Insular sources, including interdisciplinary approaches to text and material culture, continues to break new ground in the INSULAR project.

[F-d720] Anthology of Poetry (Fragment), Middletown, CT, Wesleyan University Library, Z113 .E33 1900z, No. 8. A manuscript leaf mounted in a frame with a label "Anthology of Poetry". The leaf is in Persian. The caption says (in part) "This work is from a book containing the poems of three hundred poets. The manuscript is in a well-written Nastaliq script. This leaf has small decorative elements and ruled lines of washed gold and color. With amazing skill and perfection each of the fine hairlines in the border is exactly superimposed on the corresponding one of the reverse side, thereby insuring perfect register on both sides of this fine, transparent paper. In the Islamic world, calligraphy was the most important art and examples in this fine Nastaliq script is greatly honored. Beauty was more important than legibility. This script was usually reserved for writing poetry because of its great beauty. This slanting manner of writing gave it the name of hanging writing." Just to be clear: Admittedly, like the author of the description, I don't read Persian either, but the script seems to me eminently legible. Perhaps I'm just ignorant. If you have an opinion based on experience, please let us know.

Update on Fragmentology (www.fragmentology.ms ): the journal's back online. Submissions at the moment can be made directly to fragmentarium@unifr.ch. In other news, Wesleyan UL has published their Ege "Oriental" leaves. We're always happy for help decolonizing them. fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-d...

The deadline for this job is this coming Monday!

And more decorated/illuminated letters to download and print and print for free, and then colour in. Good for children in the holidays, teachers who want a bit of a quiet time (!!), and adults who want to spend some time thinking only of what colours to use!
www.patricialovett.com/mediaeval-de...

There's an exciting new 3-year job in Göttingen (Germany) available as part of our project! www.uni-goettingen.de/en/644546.ht...

We need someone with experience in manuscript studies and early medieval Germanic vernaculars. Digital humanities skills an advantage! Deadline: 14 July. #palaeography

Image fo a seal - by someone that has not seen one - from Valenciennes, ms 0320, Thomas de Cantimpré, Albert le Grand. Liber de natura rerum, vers 1280, 230 × 156 mm. Folio 116, Image : IRHT https://patrimoine-numerique.ville-valenciennes.fr/ark:/29755/B_596066101_ms_0320 (http://initiale.irht.cnrs.fr/codex/7876).

The original colour of the skin (before it degraded) - but what is it? (image Elodie Leveque)

Mock-up of the original book binding by Elodie Leveque. Note that the fur is too dark in this mockup (image Elodie Leveque).

In 2016, the team in 2016 first confronted the collection at Troyes - but what are the bindings made of? Image of five people, one sitting, discussing a large bound medieval text held by supports in a modern library.

🧵 Is this a Dire wolf... 🤔?

No...

Our @erc.europa.eu Beasts to Craft team led by Élodie Lévêque uncovered the true identity of mysterious hairy covers on #medieval #Cistercian #manuscripts - they're ...
👇

Calf neck.

Hamburg Bible, Gl.kgl.S. 4 2°, vol. 1, fol. 135 in transmitted light. Large skin with clearly visible neck rings and axilla of the front leg. A round, white, more transparent spot on the spine (close to the blue initial) is an offprint of the second vertebrae of the thorax. Note also that on this folio made from a larger skin the spine is placed high up above the centre of the folio and only one of the axillea is visible.

3/5: The brilliance is in the details: neck rings show the calf's age, tension lines reveal stretching techniques, repair stitches identify different craftsmen's work, and even parasites tell us about animal health. Nothing is merely a "flaw" - everything is evidence!

Shaving of the dried parchment on the frame. Note that the knife has left marks on the lower part of the skin similar to those that can be seen in the illumination showing parchment on the frame on folio 183r (Figure 1) in the second volume of the Hamburg Bible (Medieval market at Gásir, Iceland)

Stretching of the skin. A cord is wrapped around the skin and a pebble in order that the skin can be attached and stretched on the frame.

2/5: What excites me most is how each parchment sheet reveals a complete narrative - from living animal to finished writing surface. The 346 calfskins used across three volumes preserve evidence of medieval animal husbandry, craft techniques, and workshop practices.

Hamburg Bible, Copenhagen, Royal Danish Library, Gl.kgl.S. 4 2°, vol. 2, fol. 183r. Illustration of the parchment-maker.

Farmer with Icelandic calf that is several days old.

Diagram showing placement of different parts of the animal’s body.

Hamburg Bible, Gl.kgl.S. 4 2°, vol. 1. Diagram showing placements of necks (green) and rumps (yellow) in the quires of the text-block.

🧵 1/5: I'm THRILLED to see Jiří Vnouček's paper on the Hamburg Bible's parchment finally published with such stunning illustrations (73 in all)!

This research shows how a careful reading of parchment tells a rich story of its creation.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📕 I am glad to see that this volume to which your humble narrator contributed is finally out in Open Access. Enjoy!

🔗 punctumbooks.com/titles/the-a...
#medievalsky

The cover of Patricia Lovett’s ‘The Art of the Scribe’.

Woooohoooo! Blow the trumpets, drum the drums! Just got an advance copy of my new book! Drum those drums and blow trumpets blow, and pop that cork! It’s always exciting!!

Historikerin Anna Dorofeeva steht vor einer weißen Tür – Foto: Universität Göttingen/Institut für Digital Humanities

Wie haben professionelle Schreiber im frühen Mittelalter neue Schriften gelernt und miteinander gearbeitet? Unsere Historikerin Anna Dorofeeva vom Institut für #DigitalHumanities untersucht dies an rund 850 Handschriften: www.campuspost.goettingen-campus.de/2025/01/21/a...

Notice for Prof Joanna Story's lecture "Insular Manuscripts in Carolingian Francia (in and from Germany)", German Historical Institute London, 28 January 2025.

Yesterday listened to Prof Joanna Story's fascinating talk (thanks @ghilondon.bsky.social) about @insularmss.bsky.social ERC AdG Project on identifying provenance of Early Medieval insular-style manuscripts with #Biocodicology (protein & aDNA analysis) – much like the Nordic CODICUM ERC Project!

ms image

A great paper by Jo Story @insularmss.bsky.social at the @ghilondon.bsky.social last night, including a mention of Vienna cod. 15: a sixth-century copy of Livy, owned by an 8th-c. bishop 'of Dorestad'. bibliotheca-laureshamensis-digital.de/view/onb_cod...

Go and hear our Leicester colleague Jo Story @insularmss.bsky.social talk about insular manuscripts!

Get your free ticket now to join us in person or via Zoom: www.ghil.ac.uk/event....

#insularmanuscripts #manuscripts #earlymedieval #medievalhistory
5/5

on libraries of the Reformation and Thirty Years War. This talk introduces a new multidisciplinary research project – INSULAR – focused on these manuscripts and their historical context in German-speaking lands. 📜

The lecture will take place as a hybrid event at the GHIL.
4/5

This distribution reflects both the establishment of monasteries in Francia by clerics from the Irish and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the seventh and eighth centuries, which imported books from the islands and where scribes learned to make books in insular fashion, as well as the destructive impact
3/5

There survive today about 850 manuscripts or fragments written in Insular scripts between the years c.650 and 900 CE. Of these, about 45 per cent are in libraries in Germany with a further 10 per cent in Switzerland or Austria.
2/5

Your chance to listen to the latest research on what English and Irish scribes were up to on the continent in the early Middle Ages, from the @insularmss.bsky.social project

How to work in a medieval French archive...

"Ne cherchez pas dans le champ de recherche"

("Do not use SEARCH in the SEARCH box...")