The project officially ended on 31 August.  As usual in this business, its spirit lives on, and there’s still much work tying the loose ends of manuscripts.  Currently, I am writing up the essay on Lollardy in medieval Scotland, based on the manuscript note of a few posts back.   Trying to establish how the Bible made its way from Oxford to Culross, I looked at the movement of books between the two places, with the earlier evidence being probably the Iona Psalter (which has recently become a bit of a celebrity in the NLS, printed on coasters, chocolates (!!!) and worktops).

Digital resources seems to have been made specifically for this kind of statistical analysis.  I was delighted to come across a digitised register of the students in the University of Oxford (available here for free, but you may have to email and explain your need).  Identifying Scottish students who studied in Oxford and a bit of number crunching followed.  The result was unexpectedly reassuring, offering a new solution to an ongoing problem – when did the manuscript make its way to Culross.  I suspected that the exlibris was written c. 1400 – and the register supported this.  It seems that the number of Scottish students in Oxford – the most obvious means of bringing manuscripts up north – fell sharply after 1400, corroborating my initial assumption (always a good thing).

And all this work hits a strong cord with me at the moment, as I started in September a new job as a departmental lecturer in medieval history at Oriel College.   Still between Oxford and Scotland, I look forward to continue the blog as I work through the materials, and there is another article on Scottish Bibles to finish, and a virtual exhibition to finalise.  More to come.

Having looked at so many manuscripts, analyses often become a second nature.  An instinct.  This has led to comments such as ‘this Bible smells English’, or ‘its parchment sounds Dutch’.  And the rest of us dully smelled and listened, and learned much about medieval Bibles and lifetime passion for manuscripts.

Laura Light, Christopher de Hamel and Paul Saenger examining a biblical manuscript.

The generous support of the Centre for Research Collections, the University of Edinburgh, and the National Library of Scotland has provided biblical manuscripts to put any hypothesis to test.  There were Bibles from Italy, France, England and Germany, including a rare example of a Bible made for a named patron.  The variety of disciplines at the workshop assisted in addressing questions of iconography and use, variations in text and layout, vernacular parallels, paleography and codicology.

In dialogue with all participants we set the goal of the workshop: to create a preliminary set of criteria that would enable the analysis and classification of a Latin Bible, written between 1200 and 1350.

Kate Rudy examines translucency of stains

This constitutes a major step towards a definitive study of this highly uniform class of manuscripts, one of the most popular of the Middle Ages.  We thought of using our joined experience to identify elements of major variation, creating a select set of criteria.  (in a way, a revision of Neil Ker’s standard description.)  We limited the amount of variants, so that a single person would be able to provide an analysis within one day.  Given the uniformity of the Late Medieval Bible, we dug deep into the Bible, and came up with variants in text, in chapter division, patters of ruling, application of  colour, etc.  Some elements follow the standard analysis of manuscripts, while others are unique to the Bible, its texts and complexity.  We hope to be able to share this preliminary list soon.  The work will then be refining and consolidating it, creating an ever increasing repository of information on Late Medieval Bibles, preferably in the form of a controlled-wiki database.

That’s why, when recently asked at a paper in Dunfermline whether I thought St Margaret’s Gospel Book (click HERE for images, which I am reluctant to imbed for copyright reasons) had been the object of a miracle, I had to take a moment to think.  The medieval account tells that while was the book was transported to facilitate an oath, it fell into a river.  The book then laid open on the riverbed, the water playing with its leaves.  It was later recovered and miraculously survived intact.

A few months ago I much enjoyed examining the manuscript in person at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.  After looking at a few medieval Gospel Books, I  was surprised to see how clean this one was.  Not only showing no marks of submersion, but also lacking the staining typical of continuous use in oath-rituals (as in the York Gospels).  In my eyes three options can explain the state of the book:

1. This is a miracle.  Not an option I can take as an historian.  But one I did raise at the paper, saying that if the book had emerged in this pristine condition after being fully submerged, this is probably a mircale.

2. The book was thoroughly cleaned during its time in Oxford.  This was suggested to me by Richard Gameson (whose article  ’The Gospels of Margaret of Scotland and the Literacy of an Early Medieval Queen’, in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor [London, 1996], pp. 149-71, is a treat), and can explain the nineteenth-century evidence for the cockling of leaves, no longer evident today.

3. However, one part of the story kept bothering me.  The leaves turning in the water.  Why did the narrator choose to expand upon this peculiar feature?  Why was it important to mention that the water reached individual leaves.  One explanation is that they might have not.  That is – to think of a Scottish Cumdach.  These Irish book-shrines (see HERE) are ornate boxes, in which Gospel Books and Missals were often kept.  Much like reliquaries, they became a container for sacred objects; and like reliquaries, they limited access to the book itself.

Could it be that the Irish influence on Scotland extended to this custom as well?  That St Margaret’s Gospel Book was kept in a shrine, hence surviving its water ordeal and preventing further signs of use?  There is no indication for this in our sources.  The lack of sources from medieval Scotland, primarily of sacrists records, does not assist in validating this hypothesis.  However (having just finished a chapter on sacred books and their bindings in medieval England), our modern reckoning of book binding does not apply to many medieval Gospel Books.  Numerous examples from across Europe tell of bindings of gold and precious stones.  We even know that Malcolm, Margaret’s husband, adorned her sacred books with gold and jewels as a sign of his love.

There is much to do before any authoritative claim could be made.  But I suspect there’s more than meet the eye in this story.

- Thursday, 19 April, 18:00 at Abbot House, Dunfermline (http://www.abbothouse.co.uk/), I’ll be giving a paper on the medieval Bible in Scotland.
- Friday, 20 April, 14:00 at Glasgow University Library, Special Collections (12th Floor), I’ll be running a workshop on the Late Medieval Bible, based on items from GUL’s collection. Highlights to include a Bible from Cambuskenneth Abbey and a Wycliffite New Testament.

One way or another, the Song of Songs became an integral part of the medieval Bible, and one of the most fond books among monastic audiences.  Numerous allegorical interpretations expanded upon this Book, seeing the love story as a map of salvation history, the romance between Christ and his church.  In the early Middle Ages these allegorical interpretations were made into short rubrics – known as voices – which were integrated into the biblical page.  Thus, readers of the book were presented not with ‘the naked text’ of the lovers (if you forgive the pun), but with a layout that mediated a specific understanding of the biblical text.

The opening line of the Book ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love [the Latin has 'breasts' and not without reason] is better than wine’ was often introduced by a historiated initial.  The letter ‘O’ (for the Latin ‘Osculetur’, let him kiss) provided illuminators with a good opportunity to present a specific understanding of this verse, most commonly in the form of Christ and Mary.  Numerous images depict Mary with Christ the child on her lap, transforming the book into the innocent of a mother and child.

Glasgow University Euing MS 1 is a Latin Bible from thirteenth-century Italy.  One of its early readers took the pains of carefully erasing one (and only) one image – that of the Osculetur.

It is evident that the reader found the picture offensive.  It is also evident that he was careful to remove only the image, not damaging any of the surrounding letter (noticed by the keen eye of Marie-Pierre Gelin).  This was probably not the work of a Reformer.  Other images, of Christ and of the Creation, were left unscathed.  The image is well-sraped, and it is difficult to learn what it was originally (I hope a UV examination next week will shed some light).  However, other parallels might have the answer.  In British Library, Egerton MS 2867, fol. 282v (a Bible 1230-1240 , probably from Canterbury), the proximity between Christ and Mary is stronger than in other images, a closeness that might have seemed slightly inappropriate given the nature of the biblical book.

The understanding of the Song of Songs as a love story between Christ and his church was beyond doubt, especially as a purely literal understanding was unaccepted.  Could it be that a devote Catholic reader found this image too close to the biblical text?

manuscript and then identify and retrieve comments for specific elements, hyperlinks, images of locations where these Bibles were created or used (just had an excursion to Cambuskenneth Abbeyto take pictures, recommended for picnics in the summer) etc.

The entry page will be a map of Scotland (hopefully this, if we’ll get permission) with a time line.  Sliding on the timeline will reveal manuscript locations on the map according to their dates.  This will enable users to quickly grasp the timeline of Bible use in Scotland (i.e. two surges in the early and later Middle Ages), as well as the uneven distribution of manuscripts in Scotland.

Here is an opportunity for the blog’s readers to leave their mark.   The virtual exhibition is still very much in the planning stage.  I’ll upload a test page once things are more advanced.  But if there are any comments or suggestions, now is the right time.  Richard and I are playing with possibilities and layouts, and we’ll be happy to have more ideas.  The reply box awaits!

Rabbits.  Robert Bartlett and Kathryn Rudy discussed the nature of the parchment used in Late Medieval Bibles.  Called ‘uterine vellum’, but without any proper grounding, this parchment is of exquisitely thin, parallel to a modern-day tissue paper but much more resilient.  It is also very clear and easily employed by scribes.  This ‘super-parchment’ befits the Late Medieval Bible perfectly, making possible the creation of a pocket book.  Its exact nature is still unknown, and suggestions have been made supporting the use of small animals, such as rabbits or even cats in its creation.  Thanks to Marlene Hennessy I now have a substantial bibliography on the topic (as well as on the joys of flaying), which I hope to cover soon.

Roman Law.  Looking at how the Bible was quoted I advocated the importance of the thirteenth century and the introduction of chapter numbers on biblical mnemonics.  The major exception is the Book of Psalms.  Psalms continued (for a very very long time) to be identified not by a numerical value, but rather by their opening line.  Robert and Chris Given-Wilson offered an interesting parallel from Roman law, in which textual elements were identified by incipit long after the introduction of numerical divisions.

This is just the tip of an iceberg of quotation practices in the Middle Ages.  It is also an indication to the rarely addressed similarity between liturgy and law – two complex fields, governed by trained professionals and a set of highly structured rituals.  Both are, likewise, all-but-inaccessible to the modern novice.

In the Mishna it is said that whoever brings a saying in the name of its speaker it is as if he brings salvation to the world.  I’ll be happy with accuracy.

MS 217 exemplifies the wealth of information encoded in the pages of a Late Medieval Bible: a variety of uses and reading strategies, generations of readers who engaged with the biblical text and with one another.  A sample excavation reveals:

The foundational layer of the Bible as it left the stationer’s shop demonstrates an early sample, from c. 1230 England.  Its chapter divisions are not yet firmly set, but served as a bone of contention between scribe and rubricator (the latter trying to rectify the former’s division by setting new chapter divisions and where no space for initials was provided).  Such dating is confirmed by  pricking, marginal chapter nos. and a five-colum layout for the Interpretations of Hebrew Names.

Then, in (relatively) quick succession, three layers are discernible.  They show how one

Bible was used across the medieval spectrum of reading strategies:

Exegesis.  Only few notes survive preserving medieval glosses.  Often short in nature, one of the lengthier explains the complexity of Revelation 13:18 (‘This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666′), in the image below.

Preaching.  On the other side of the exegetical coin is its dissemination.  Some marginal annotations would have been extremely useful for medieval preachers.  A note accompanying Proverbs 14, expands upon the word fear (timor, 14:26-7).

Although barely legible without a UV light, the three distinct levels in which its accompanying words are preserved are indicative of the medieval distinctiones and the aesthetics of late medieval sermons.  Such sermons employed major and minor divisions as means of amplifying a biblical nucleus, at times a single word.

Liturgy. The last side of this over-elaborate coin in the use of this Bible in public recitation.  Throughout the biblical text there are indications for such reading strategy – specifically aimed at facilitating refectory readings.

Thus, next to Jeremiah ch. 51 the letters S[ecundus] and T[ertius] appear, dividing reading portions.  They are accompanied by an indication of the liturgical occasion: the fourth day in the octave (feria) of Easter.

The last layer was added at the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century.  It demonstrates a deep engagement with the biblical text – re-writing incipits or giving titles to key parts.  It also provides arabic numerals to replace the Roman numerals for some numerical descriptions, such as those found at the beginning of the Book of Numbers.  And – my personal suspicion – that reader is also responsible for erasing most of the notes made by previous readers, evident throughout the Bible.  Hard to qualify and substantiate, I suspect such a deep engagement with the biblical text left little space for previous generations of readers and their very medieval understanding of the Bible.

no[ta] con[tra] lolla|

no[n] p[o]p[u]l[u]s t[erre sed]|

ego

This is only a [revised with a suggestion from Laura Light] tentative transcription.  Abbreviations and truncation render expansions indecisive.   Other options are possible, and suggestions most welcome.

The biblical location is also of importance.  Ezekiel 33:6-7 discusses the watchman, who neglects to warn the people in the face of a looming threat.

I’m still working to fill in the gaps – both on the palaeography and the use of these verses in anti-Lollard polemics.  More to come soon.

In-depth investigation of the manuscript turned out most revealing (and a nice support to the project’s rationale of inferring from the manuscript evidence on medieval Scotland).

Following the arrival of the Bible to Culross, notes in several hands were made.  A fifteenth-century hand added the opening words of 1 Sam 25 (‘mortuus est autem Samuel’), which are lacking in the original.  This is a testimony to an active reading of the biblical text at Culross, and to the existence of an additional Bible in the Monastery.  Such a discovery is not a complete surprise, given the known activities at Culross.  However, the lack of any library record makes any discovery of importance.

Several corrections to chapter divisions likewise support this hypothesis.  As I’m growing quite anal about chapter divisions and their fluctuation (with thanks to Paul Saenger, the fons et origo of this obsession), it was good to see the attention given by medieval readers to these divisions, in an image of Exodus 16.  

A keen interest in the hymns and poetry of the Bible is also a mark of this Bible.  This

can be traced to the original scribe, as in the previous image, in which the Song of the Sea (Shirat haYam, Ex 15) was written  in alternating red and blue initials.  This layout is usually reserved for the Psalms, and only rarely applied to other biblical hymns.  The poetry of the Bible, and its role in the liturgy, continued to be a source of interest to subsequent readers of the this Bible.  One such reader added a list of the Gallican Canticles at the end of 2 Paralipomenon.  This list (I thank Laura Light for her assistance in its identification) employs an interesting reference system, one that makes use of book, chapter and page identification.

Lastly, a symbol which I like to call ‘The Pacman Ghost’ appears at the very end of 2 Paralipomenon.  It identifies the place of the apocryphal Prayer of Manasses

(oratio Manasses) which is supplied in full at the very last folio of the manuscripts.  Such feature appears at times in Late Medieval Bibles, as in Huntington Library, HM 51, fol. 376v.  But you must agree that the similarity between the manuscript and the computer game cannot be easily dismissed!