Medieval manuscripts blog

Bringing our medieval manuscripts to life

12 posts from September 2013

06 September 2013

Seamus Heaney: An Appreciation

It is a week since Famous Seamus sadly passed away. Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate for Literature, came to the British Library as part of our Beowulf week in October 2009. In front of an enthralled audience, he read extracts from his award-winning translation of Beowulf. Heaney then listened in turn as Michael Morpurgo and Benjamin Bagby performed their respective versions of the poem, before all three discussed Beowulf under the expert chairmanship of Michael Wood.

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The Beowulf event at the British Library in 2009, featuring (from left to right) Michael Wood, Michael Morpurgo, Benjamin Bagby and Seamus Heaney

As a curator at the British Library, it's always rewarding to find ways of making our medieval manuscripts come to life, and to demonstrate how they remain relevant to modern and future generations. Seamus Heaney's participation in our week of Beowulf events was a notable highlight -- how to take an epic written in a long-dead language, and to re-invent and re-interpret it for modern listeners.

Heaney's version of Beowulf had won the Whitbread Prize for Book of the Year in 1999. Around that time, the British Library acquired from him nine typewritten drafts, with handwritten annotations, of the first page of his version of Beowulf (Additional MS 78917). When visiting us in 2009, Seamus Heaney expressed his delight to see examples of his draft displayed alongside the original manuscript of Beowulf, together with paintings loaned by Michael Foreman, the illustrator of Michael Morpurgo's re-telling of the story for children.

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A draft of Seamus Heaney's award-winning version of Beowulf (London, British Library, MS Additional 78917).

Before appearing onstage at the British Library, Seamus Heaney had attended the previous evening's performance by Benjamin Bagby, who sings the story of Beowulf and Grendel in the original Old English, to the accompaniment of the harp. I gave Heaney a copy of our Treasures in Focus introduction to Beowulf, and he very kindly signed my own copy of his Beowulf translation. I thanked him for so kindly agreeing to perform in our event; but no, the pleasure was his, he replied, it had been a privilege to see Bagby sing Beowulf, the poem which Seamus Heaney had in turn transformed into a modern masterpiece. It was one of those truly special moments, to witness the coming together of two great poets, wordsmiths who lived a thousand years apart but were united by their love of the poetic form.

The Old English poem Beowulf ends with the burial of the eponymous hero. We can do Seamus Heaney no better compliment than to repeat here the same lines in his own words, with the gracious permission of Faber and Faber, his publishers.

"Then twelve warriors rode around the tomb,

chieftain's sons, champions in battle,

all of them distraught, chanting in dirges,

mourning his loss as a man and a king.

They extolled his heroic nature and exploits

and gave thanks for his greatness; which was the proper thing,

for a man should praise a prince whom he holds dear

and cherish his memory when that moment comes

when he has to be convoyed from his bodily home."

 

Julian Harrison, Curator of Pre-1600 Historical Manuscripts

05 September 2013

A Medieval Menagerie

Our calendar series for 2012 featured the gorgeous Hours of Joanna the Mad (Add MS 18852), a spectacular Book of Hours that was produced for Joanna of Castile (more frequently, and somewhat unfairly, known as Joanna the Mad) in Bruges between 1496 and 1506.  This Book of Hours was clearly customised for Joanna, who appears in several miniatures (see below); as well as including some unusual texts that were probably chosen by her, the manuscript also contains a stunning programme of illumination. 

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Miniature of Joanna of Castile praying, accompanied by John the Evangelist, Hours of Joanna of Castile, Bruges, between 1496 and 1506, Add MS 18852, f. 288

Along with the calendar and other full-page miniatures, nearly every folio of the Hours of Joanna the Mad contains a marginal painting that does not appear to relate directly to the text above.  The marginalia includes paintings of jewels, flowers, and other decorative elements, but the majority of the images are of animals, a wild profusion of life that merits further investigation.  Here are a few of our favourites.

Some of these animals are familiar:

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Detail of a squirrel eating a nut, Add MS 18852, f. 88v

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Detail of a duck, Add MS 18852, f. 120r

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 Detail of a sheep, Add MS 18852, f. 284v

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Detail of a grasshopper, Add MS 18852, f. 30r

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Detail of a rather downcast dog, Add MS 18852, f. 41v

 

Some are rather less familiar:

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Detail of a a goat-chicken, Add MS 18852, f. 67r

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Detail of a hybrid knight in armour, Add MS 18852, f. 117v

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Detail of a... well, some kind of animal with a peacock's tail and wings, Add MS 18852, f. 128r

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Detail of a bat? or a beaver with wings?, Add MS 18852, f. 150r

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Detail of a fish with legs, Add MS 18852, f. 252r

 

And some are just plain odd:

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Detail of a rather elderly be-hatted cherub carrying a flower, Add MS 18852, f. 87r

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Detail of a female Green Man (or she-Hulk) looking into a mirror, Add MS 18852, f. 98v

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Detail of an unlikely pair of friends, Add MS 18852, f. 108v

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Detail of a winged siren (with a fetching hat) grinding colours, Add MS 18852, f. 291r

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Detail of a rather disquieting musical instrument (bagpipes?), Add MS 18852, f. 98r

Please have a look at the rest of the Hours of Joanna the Mad, and be sure to let us know your favourites!  As always, you can follow us on Twitter for more updates @BLMedieval.

- Sarah J Biggs

03 September 2013

The Bounty of Byzantium

The British Library is delighted to announce the digitisation of eleven new Greek manuscripts, all of which are now available on our Digitised Manuscripts site.  This project was generously funded by Sam Fogg.  The manuscripts range in date from the tenth century to the sixteenth century, and include a number of Gospels and related texts as well as two works of Byzantine poetry.

We are very excited to make these newly-digitised manuscripts widely available; they contain many stunning images, and several have original or near-contemporary bindings.  Keep an eye out for future blog posts which will describe some of the  individual manuscripts in more detail, but for now, enjoy exploring some of the treasures of our Greek collections!

The eleven manuscripts now on Digitised Manuscripts are:

Burney MS 19:  Gospels, second half of the 10th century, with illuminated headpieces and initials. Illuminated portraits of the four evangelists were added in the twelfth century.

Burney MS 20:  Gospels, 1285, with illuminated headpieces and portraits of the evanglists.

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Evangelist portrait of Luke, Burney MS 20, f. 142v

Burney MS 97:  Manuel Philes, De animalium proprietate, a series of poems on different animals, with accompanying illustrations. Written by the noted Cretan scribe Angelos Vergekios in the second quarter of the sixteenth century.

Additional MS 26103:  Gospels, probably 12th century, containing illuminated headpieces and initials, and a portrait of St John the Evangelist and his scribe Prochoros.

Additional MS 28819:  Psalter, 16th century, with an illuminated portrait of David and illuminated headpieces.

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Decorated headpiece at the beginning of Psalms, Add MS 28819, f. 2r

Additional MS 28820:  Divine Liturgies, 1695-1709, with illuminated portraits of John Chrysostom, Basil, and Gregory.

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Portrait of John Chrysostom and angels, Add MS 28820, f. 2v

Additional MS 35030:  Gospels, 13th century, with illuminated headpieces and portraits of the evangelists, and decorated canon tables.

Additional MS 37002:  Gospels, 1314-1315, with illuminated headpieces and portraits of the evangelists, and decorated canon tables.

Additional MS 39591:  formerly Parham MS 9):  Gospels, mid-12th century, with illuminated headpieces and portraits of the evangelists (one of which is a nineteenth-century addition).

Additional MS 39603 (formerly Parham MS 21):  a cruciform Lectionary, 12th century, with illuminated initials and finial ornaments. In a binding of wooden boards covered with blue velvet.

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Front binding, Add MS 39603

Additional MS 40724:  Georgios Choumnos, Metrical Paraphrase of Genesis and Exodus, 15th-16th centuries, with coloured illustrations throughout.

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Add MS 40724, f. 66r

-  Cillian O'Hogan

01 September 2013

A Calendar Page for September 2013

For more details on calendar pages or the Golf Book, please see the post for January 2013.

The important end-of-the-summer work in the fields continues in these calendar pages for September.  In the opening miniature, men are ploughing with teams of horses, while another man sows grain from a bulging sack.  Behind them can be seen a modest farmhouse, and to the right, a man knocking acorns from the trees to feed the pigs that have gathered around him, in a labour more usually associated with November or December.  In the bas-de-page, a group of white-clad men are playing at marbles, while another is trying his luck on a pair of stilts.  On the following page, below the saints' days for September and a roundel of a scorpion for Scorpio, is a scene of men playing a game that closely resembles golf (hence the name given to this manuscript, the Golf Book); for more details on this unique depiction, please see our post A Good Walk Spoiled.

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Calendar page for September with a miniature of labourers ploughing and sowing grain, from the Golf Book (Book of Hours, Use of Rome), workshop of Simon Bening, Netherlands (Bruges), c. 1540, Additional MS 24098, f. 26v

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Calendar page for September with a bas-de-page scene of a men playing a golf-type game, from the Golf Book (Book of Hours, Use of Rome), workshop of Simon Bening, Netherlands (Bruges), c. 1540, Additional MS 24098, f. 27r