Medieval book historian at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver. I post images of medieval books. More eye candy on Twitter (@erik_kwakkel) and longer blogs on medievalbooks.nl.
Medieval selfies and the earliest selfie-stick Selfies are by no means an exclusively modern phenomenon. During the Middle Ages artists would portray themselves, even realistically. The person seen here made two selfies of himself and even tells us his name: “Rufillus”, Latin for The Redheaded. In the top image he is using a stick to support his arm so as to make a better picture. I like to think…
Eating a book These three objects can hardly be called books. Yet they are, although they are not what you’d expect from such objects. These so-called “hornbooks” were used to teach children to read, roughly from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. To this end they presented some “light” reading, such as the alphabet, the Lord’s Prayer and other short texts. Some of these hornbooks were…
Snippets in Stone Here are two unusual stone fragments. The object at the top is an “ostrakon”, a piece of stone or pottery filled with text, in this case from Byzantine Egypt, dating from c. 600. While the fragment seems to be part of something that was initially much bigger (a sizable pot filled with a long biblical text, perhaps), it was actually always meant to be like this: a snippet with…
Old sand Today I looked at a handwritten account book from 1717. It listed a series of expenses paid by the city of Leiden (the Dutch city where I live) to various suppliers - of books, papers, pens. Being a medieval book historian, any source made after 1500 is alien. Because I am used to handling parchment books, it was odd to handle a book that was made out of paper - and a lot of it, for that…
Medieval book transport You are looking at two ‘wraps’ (top), the outside and inside of a box (middle), and a leather satchel (bottom). What they share is not just their old age (they are all medieval), but also the purpose for which they were made: to transport a book from A to B. The actual reason for transporting books in these objects varied considerably. The wraps are late-medieval girdle…
manuscriptbook : The Elegant Simplicity of the St Cuthbert Gospel This simple page, bare of decoration, is actually one of the most remarkable pages in Western manuscript history. It is in fact a folio (2v) from the St Cuthbert Gospel, also known as the Stonyhurst Gospel ( British Library, Add MS 89000 ), which is the oldest intact European book. The book was apparently tucked away in the coffin…
Pretty degree You would think this pretty document, dating from 1551, is a charter issued by a duke or a royal court. However, it is a university diploma from the University of Aix. It was handed out by the chancellor to a student (a monk). How times have changed: it is a giant leap from this colourful piece of parchment to the printed piece of paper handed out by universities today. Pics: Aix en…
A horse on wheels, what’s not to love? Great post. manuscriptbook : Medieval Connections to ‘Classical Roots’ This manuscript ( British Library, Royal MS 20 D I ) of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César (‘Ancient history up to Caesar’) is the earliest surviving manuscript of the second redaction of this work. This redaction, like this manuscript, was produced in Naples around 1330-1340. It focuses…
700-year-old English speech bubbles If you thought comics were a modern invention, think again! The top image of c . 1300 shows a drawing that has the ingredients of a modern comic book drawing, including the fact that the text is placed in real speech bubbles: the words (which are in English!) are connected to the speaker’s mouth by means of a tiny line. It turns out this tradition was alive and…
I love how a complex layout produces such a pretty page. manuscriptbook : Can You Hear The Harmony of the Spheres? The cliché that the medieval Church ruthlessly repressed all science can be quickly argued against with a look at this manuscript, a scientific text book for monks written in late twelfth-century England ( Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W. 73 ). It is a compendium of knowledge from…
Perfect book This is the perfect medieval book: it is on purple parchment, written in golden letters, and illuminated with great images. To top it, the book is fitted in an original bookbox, very few of which survive. What more could a book lover want? Pics: London, British Library, Stowe 955 (1500-1525). More information and additional images here .
Books as hardware These odd-looking medieval books share one peculiarity: they were all made into interactive objects because actual turning discs were attached to the page, usually more than one. The makers of these manuscripts added them to calculate the position of sun and moon (Pic 1), the date of Easter (not shown), or make other calculations (Pic 3). Particularly intriguing is the set of…
Lovely green whale - The first of hopefully many Tumblr posts by the students in my and JJ’s manuscript course at Leiden University. manuscriptbook : Worrisome Whales This beautifully illustrated manuscript page comes from a thirteenth-century Latin bestiary, made in England, and now housed in the collections of the British Library ( Harley 3244 , f. 61r). The inky gothic script surrounds two…
Party time The first and last text line on the medieval page was a place to party. Almost the entire page the scribe had to confine himself to narrow horizontal tracks on which the lines of text were written: no room to manouvre or sidestep seriousness. Then, finally, a new page started, which meant lots of room in the upper margin: swirly lines shooting out of the top line underscore the…
Serious fun You have seen your share of funny images from medieval times in this blog. When you browse books before print, either in online databases or for real, you are bound to encounter one sooner or later, either in the margins or attached to a capital letter. This particular manuscript, however, is fun all over. The decorator doodled a grumpy courtier and his jester in the lower margin (Pic…
Zoink! Usually medieval illustrations look quite different from those in modern comic books. This one, however, breaks with that rule: it is almost 600 years old, yet it looks like it was drawn yesterday. It shows a stereotypical comic book expression, of a pseudo-offended person. The spiky hairdo adds to the eerily-modern look of this funny face. Zoink! Pic: Angers, Bibliothèque municipale, MS…
Blue dot You have to be really careful as a medieval decorator. In the Middle Ages the sequence of making a book was as follows: first the scribe copied the text, painstakingly, sweating over a single parchment page for up to half a day; and then the decorator would add color. This meant, of course, that the brush of the latter artist was hovering over a completed page. These images show what…
Portrait of a lady Some medieval images are just different. This one shows a close-up of a woman’s face, which is unusual enough for medieval books. What is really astonishing is the detail of the image, as well as its modern - almost cartoon-like - feel. The tiny white lines in her eyes give her face a sad look, a trick still used by artists today. There is something else that makes the face…
Drawing with words These images are not just spectacular to look at, they are also special from a production point of view. The shared feature in all four of them is the manner in which the pictures are formed: with words! The lines that make up the rider and the dachshund are, if you look carefully, tiny scribbly lines of Hebrew. The swan and hare are shaped - filled - with bold ninth-century…
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/03/world/medieval-doodles/ : Like medieval doodles? In this CNN piece I talk about what they are and show a lot of great examples.