"Inspired by rising literacy rates and advancing technologies, the nineteenth century saw the book transform from a largely hand-made object to a mass-produced product."
Look, the book covers discussed here are lovely; and there's a fascinating story to be told about them. But the narrative here of book production as some linear march of progress is just unbelievable.
"In this new environment the book cover took on added importance: it was no longer merely a functional protection for the pages but instead became a key platform through which to communicate and sell the book."
OH, OK.
Follow me, I don't promote Eurocentric, teleological, and technologically determinist takes on book history.
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This story is making the rounds, so before anyone gets the wrong idea: no, you cannot issue a medical diagnosis using the "evidence" of a medieval image. Despite the headline, that's not what the researchers here did either. Explanation in the next tweet.
Key paragraph: "Armed with a microscope and a late 12th-century chronicle, Seliger and Koopmans discerned leprotic spots on a man having his legs washed—distinguishing them from corrosion marks on the glass. He could suddenly be matched to the Latin inscription “lepra” beneath."
What fascinates me in this paragraph is the instrumentalizing of the microscope as the authenticating device, conflating the image of a human with the material of the glass, turning the former into a scientific specimen. But that's not what happened here. The conservator didn't
You can tell me dimensions in cm or inches all day; but nothing compares to this manuscript, which contains two red lines specifying the length & width "of the piece of salmon for the small dish of the ladies owed by...the abbess." More info below.
This is the Liber ordinarius of Nivelles, which is digitized fully here:
It's common to find in the later Middle Ages MSS that show an interest in real size. For ex, MSS contain representations of the nails w which Christ was nailed to the cross, & they'll have captions vouching that that size of the depicted nails match the size of the actual ones.
Manuscript lesson of the day: anti-theft edition! Here's an inventory of books from St Paul's Cathedral Library, written up in 1458. It is written in the form of a chirograph, with wavy lines at the edge. Explanation in the next tweets. (BL Cotton Charter xiii.2) /1
Two identical copies were drawn up then cut along the line at the left, each held by a different individual. At a given time, a chaplain would be asked to show this inventory next to its copy for a shelf audit. /2
This helped identify books missing from the shelves. The wavy lines ensure that the copies brought together were those written at the same time & are exact copies. This prevented the chaplain from forging a copy of the inventory which might leave off any books he had stolen. /3
Mark my works, in six months we're going to see at least a few articles by social scientists & proponents of "cultural evolution" <<shudder>> using this dataset as the foundation for articles offering specious arguments about the Greatness of The West.
Journalists' casting everything in terms of opposing sides is so ignorant, given that the "globalist elite" [yikes, but not surprising] cited by 1 redditor is meant to be the opposite of the "internet dorks" among whom is one who invested 6figs in shares. slate.com/technology/202…
One of the new investment apps for entrants to the market is called "Robinhood," & there's a lot to say here abt the so-called internet dorks who thing of themselves as neo-medieval populists, stealing from that "globalist elite" (antisemitic slur) & reallocating to themselves.
Can I write an article on this? It's the about page for Robinhood.
Manuscript lesson of the Day! A quickie thread on...evidence of thread! Perusing this early 13C Psalter, and I, very happily, came across these holes, which appear to be curtain holes. bl.uk/manuscripts/Vi… /1
This fall I attended an excellent talk by Morgan Adams, titled, "Hidden in Plain Sight: Identifying Evidence of Curtains in Medieval Manuscripts in the Morgan Library & Museum." I learned new things about how to identify evidence that a MS once contained curtains. /3