1. Manuscript lesson of the Day! The technology of the page. Every page can be thought of as the product of a methodology for communication. Some highly engineered pages are those of glossed books (books with commentary) of the 12th century. Here I'll walk through one.
2. In my first tweet, I outlined in green the main text on the page, which is text from Psalm 51. The remaining infrastructure of the page serves the function of keying the glosses (commentary) to that main text. Here I've marked out in purple the space occupied by the glosses.
Next up is the technique for letting the reader know which gloss corresponds to which part of the main text. I've outlined here in yellow a word in the main text, which is repeated in the section with the commentary, and underlined. The relevant gloss then follows.
4. This commentary contains words on the main Psalm text by celebrated "auctores" (like "author" in our sense, but...More Importanter? The topic for another thread). So here those names are heavily abbreviated, but they're Augustine and Cassiodorus. Citing your sources, yay!
5. Little symbols (tie-marks) help the reader then key the commentary to the auctor. So, when you see a graphic symbol in the commentary column, find its nearest twin. That will tell you the person responsible for that particular gloss.
6. We're still not done! Colored initials in the main text indicate the beginning of a new verse from the Psalm. Smaller colored initials of the same words appear in the adjacent commentary column, so the reader knows where commentary on that new verse starts.
7. Finally, we have a large, red and sparingly pen-flourished initial that indicates the start of the next main text, in this case, Psalm 52. If you'd like to explore this manuscript further, you can do so thanks to the Digital Bodleian, here digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/51e096…
8. What I neglected to mention earlier in the thread is the use of different sizes of script to distinguish the main text from the gloss. So we have, just on this one page, a variety of mechanisms that ease a highly active and complex engagement w the text. They include:
9. Different sizes of script, color coding, placement, symbols to ease cross-reference, a system of abbreviation, and different systems for spacing.
10. And the graphic intelligence of this whole arrangement is made especially clear when one attempts, as I have done, to produce one's own system of reference for breaking down and explicating the components of this page.
11. p.s. just to shout her out bc she is the best: in the fall @Yael_Rice gave a lecture for a class I was teaching, in which she addressed the development of the early design of Qur'an manuscripts, and it's one of the best class lectures I've ever seen. Manuscripts are amazing.
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Hello! I'm an art historian who researches the 15C coinage of England! These headlines are not only sensationalist; they also participate in a longstanding effort to date as early as possible Euro presence on & further legitimize claims to this continent. /1
The story is that someone found a coin in Newfoundland from the reign of Henry VI, minted btn 1422-1427. To the credit of those who wrote this press release, they make no claim as to the coin’s presence suggesting Euros arriving in Canada at that time. gov.nl.ca/releases/2022/… /2
We leave that to journalists who like to misrepresent history and create harmful popular narratives, as here in the CNN piece. /3 cnn.com/style/article/…
🧵 One of the things I do is teach college students how to read old handwriting. Very, very old handwriting. This field is known as paleography. If handwriting didn't change over time, this part of my job would be unnecessary. So, some thoughts on top of these ones. /1
Perennial commentary abt the decline of instruction in cursive often makes several assumptions.
Assumption 1: cursive is one thing
Assumption 2: cursive gives us access to history
Assumption 3: cursive has prestige
Assumption 4: this educational lapse is new
/2
Assumption 1 (cursive is one thing) is fairly easy to dispute on two counts. First, in the context of American education, there have been several waves of different kinds of favored cursive, whether the Palmer D'Nealian, Zaner-Bloser etc. And all of these look different. /3
🧵 Medieval Manuscript Lesson of the Day. Canon Tables! A sophisticated form of textual technology, cross referencing, & theological argumentation all delivered in a beautiful and meaningful package—what we would today call graphic design. /1
The invention of canon tables is attributed to Eusebius of Caesaria in the 4th century CE to answer the need for correlation between the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John. Each of these tells the life of Christ, but they differ in order, content, & detail. /2
And yet, they are all true. The canon tables were invented both to aid readers in finding the passages in each of the Gospels that relate the same information *and* to facilitate the contemplative exercise of reconciling their truth as Scripture. /3
People typically associate apps with smartphones (in definition apps are just programs designed to execute tasks that don't run the computer itself). But apps are common in premodern books.
A 🧵 on app technology in this book from 16th-century England!/1
The book is known commonly as Frank Adams's Writing Tables, as can be seen on the title page here. This copy is in the Houghton Library, and it's especially famous for two things: its erasable pages and the survival of its original stylus. /2
I always end my course "Romanesque & Gothic Art" w a lecture on the Black Death & Art of the Macabre. It was long believed that the macabre emerged in response to the plague, but art historians have argued against this myth. A🧵on why the macabre was NOT a response to plague. /1
Whenever I deliver lectures on the same topic across the years, I revise them. As one can imagine, this particular lecture has changed dramatically over the last 2 years. One thing that's changed has been my understanding of why busting the myths abt the macabre is important. /2
So, first: what is the macabre? Largely I lay it out for my students according to these four criteria, which are embodied by this rosary bead in the Met. metmuseum.org/art/collection… /3
I received this leaf as a gift a couple of years ago with almost no information included. So. How did I figure out what I got? A step-by-step guide. /1
Step 1 is eyeballing things. The leaf is relatively small, about the height of my hand (measurements can come at a later point; we’re just feeling things out here). And it’s in Dutch, so this puts me in the mindset of a private prayer book, probably from the 15th century. /2
Step 2. The Dutch Book of Hours in the Grote translation is online: dbnl.org/tekst/grot001g…… I do a search of a few phrases (medieval spelling's variable, so it takes a few tries w/different phrases). Finally a hit. It appears to be a Psalm from the Office of the Dead./3