10 November 2021
The Floreffe Bible on exhibition
This year is the 900th anniversary of the founding of the Premonstratensian abbey of Floreffe, on the river Sambre near Namur, in 1121. The anniversary is being celebrated in Namur at TreM.a: the Museum of Ancient Arts, with the exhibition Grandeur et déchéance. L’héritage patrimonial de l’abbaye de Floreffe which opened in late October.
The exhibition features the second volume of the enormous (480 x 335 mm) two-volume Bible made in Floreffe in around 1170, now in the British Library’s collection. The manuscript is open at the beginning of the Gospel of St Luke, which features a large illuminated miniature above the first word of the text ‘Quoniam’ [quidem multi conati sunt ordinare narrationem] (Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a narration).
Like the other miniatures in the Bible, this one provides a sophisticated visual commentary on the accompanying text. In part, the image relates to the Evangelist’s symbol of St Luke. From an early date, Church Fathers associated symbols with the Four Evangelists, derived from Ezekiel’s vision of the four living creatures with four faces (Ezekiel 1:5-11), and from St John’s vision of the four living creatures before the throne (Revelation 4:6-8). St Luke’s symbol is an ox or calf, while the others are a man for St Matthew, a lion for St Mark and an eagle for St John.
In the lower register of the miniature, a priest is sacrificing a calf on an altar. On either side are figures holding scrolls bearings texts from the Old or New Testament. To the left, King David, the supposed author of the Psalms, holds a scroll with Psalm 68:32: ‘[et] placebit Deo super vitulum novellum, cornua producentem et ungulas’ ([And] it shall please God better than a young calf, that bringeth forth horns and hoofs). To the right, St Luke, holding his symbol, which resembles the calf being sacrificed, holds a scroll with verses from Luke 15:22-23: ‘Dixit autem pater ad servos suos: . . . et adducite vitulum saginatum, et occidite’ (And the father said to his servants: . . .And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it).
The upper scene of the miniature is the Crucifixion of Christ, with the soldier Longinus on the left, piercing Christ's side with his spear, and the soldier Stephaton on the right, holding a sponge filled with vinegar. Just above the transverse beam of the cross, the Old and New Testament quotations and supposed authors are reversed in order. On the left, St Paul holds a scroll with a verse from Hebrews 9:12: ‘[neque per sanguinem hircorum aut vitulorum, sed] per proprium sanguinem introivit semel in Sancta’ ([Neither by the blood of goats, or of calves, but] by his own blood, entered once into the holies). On the right, a crowned King David points directly at Christ; his scroll contains a verse from Psalm 109:4: ‘Tu es sacerdos in aeternum secundum ordinem Melchisedech’ (Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech).
Rhymed verses inscribed on the arch above summarise the significance of the images:
Pro nevo fraudis vitulus datur hostia laudis
Quod Christus vitulus sit docet hic titulusFor the blemish of the fraud [i. e., of the devil] a calf is given as the sacrifice of praise [c.f. Hebrews 13:15]
That this calf is Christ is what this inscription shows.(Translation by Peter Toth).
Each of the Gospels in the Floreffe Bible opens with a similar image with layered interpretations and visual commentaries. For example, you can read about the opening of the Gospel of St Mark, which explores the relationship between the lion and Christ’s Resurrection, in our previous blogpost.
Another of the images in the manuscript, at the beginning of the Book of Job, connects the family of Job to the three theological virtues and the Seven Gifts of the Spirit. You can also read about this page in a previous blogpost.
The first volume of the Floreffe Bible is also on public display, in the Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery at the British Library in London, where it is open to St Jerome’s letter to Paulinus, bishop of Nola, in which he urges Paulinus to make a diligent study of the Scriptures. Both volumes are also available online on our Digitised Manuscript website.
Kathleen Doyle
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31 October 2021
Afterlives and otherworlds: three ghost stories from medieval Ireland
Masks, murder and medieval Irish literature — these were the three passions of Michael Myers, primary antagonist of the Halloween movies. In John Carpenter's 1981 horror classic, Halloween 2, Myers took a short break from his Halloween massacre to break into a school and write ‘SAMHAIN’ in blood on a blackboard. His psychiatrist, Dr Sam Loomis, explained that this was a Celtic word meaning ‘Lord of the dead. The end of summer. The festival of Samhain, October 31st’. This is not entirely accurate: the Dictionary of the Irish Language instead defines samain as 1 November or All Saints’ Day.
The police officers and Dr Loomis looking at the word ‘Samhain’ written in blood on a blackboard, from the film Halloween 2
Given this connection, we thought it would be fitting to celebrate Halloween with some spooky Irish stories from British Library manuscripts. Although there were no masked murderers prowling the suburbs in medieval Ireland, these tales of the supernatural should satisfy fans of horror and medieval literature alike.
An image of Death crowned, in the Carthusian Miscellany (England, 15th century): Add MS 37049, f. 31v
Our first Irish ghost story, Echtra Nerai ('The Adventures of Nera'), is set on the eve of Samhain, 31 October. King Ailill and Queen Medb (Maeve) were at Ráth Cruachan with their household, playing an appropriately ghastly game — whoever could tie a withy round the foot of either of the two men hanged outside would win a prize. True to all good horror stories, it was a dark night of great horror on which demons always appeared. This was enough to scare all the men, who ran back inside the house in fright.
The opening lines of The Adventure of Nera, with space for the opening initial left unfilled (Ireland, 16th century): Egerton MS 1782, f. 71v
Nera braved the night, but the withy fell from his grasp three times. Fortunately, the corpse was surprisingly helpful despite his recent execution, and advised Nera to put a peg on the withy to keep it in place. The corpse then complimented Nera on his courage and asked for a drink, as he had been very thirsty when he was hanged. Nera agreed and gave the dead man a piggy-back ride to a nearby house surrounded by a lake of fire. The corpse complained that this house was no good, and neither was the next house surrounded by a lake of water. The third house, much like the story of Goldilocks, was just right. Unfortunately for its occupants, the corpse spat out the lost drops of his drink on them, killing them all.
Unperturbed, Nera brought the corpse back to the gallows, but on his return he saw Ráth Cruachan burning and the decapitated heads of its residents on the ground. Nera followed the otherworldly army responsible for this carnage into a síd, or fairy hill, which led him to the Otherworld. There he was ordered by the king to live with a single woman and to bring him firewood every day. This woman revealed in turn that the destruction Nera had seen was only a vision, and that he must warn his people to be on guard the next Samhain.
The Adventure of Nera, when Nera's wife warns him that the Otherworld host will attack next Samhain when the ‘fairy-mounds’ of Ireland are open: Egerton MS 1782, f. 73r
Nera learned that no time had passed in Ráth Cruachan, despite spending three days in the Otherworld. His warnings were heeded and on Samhain the following year he was sent back to rescue his new family from the síd. After discovering he had a son, he returned to the mortal realm telling of the wonders of the Otherworld and the coming attack next Samhain. The following year the men of Ailill and Medb raided the síd, destroying it and taking three treasures: the crown of Briúin, the mantle of Lóegaire in Armagh, and the shirt of Dunlaing in Kildare. Nera, in contrast, returned to the síd where he would remain with his wife until Doomsday.
Other medieval Irish ghosts tended to be friendly, albeit a bit of a nuisance. Often they were simply looking for somebody to pray for them to get into Heaven. This was the case in our second ghost story, recounted in Egerton MS 92, which describes how a recently-deceased nun had appeared to Maol Póil úa Cináetha. After staying up late to discuss astrology with a fellow monk, Maol Póil had tried to sleep, but he was interrupted by a nun who had died 6 days earlier, who appeared and chastised him for discussing astrology instead of praying for her. When Maol Póil asked which prayer she would like, she requested the Bíait, possibly Psalm 118 or Psalm 32, one of the Seven Penitential Psalms. Her final destination is not revealed, but the efficacy of prayer for helping ghosts is attested elsewhere.
The same manuscript tells of Coirpre Crom (Coirpre the Stooping), bishop of Clonmacnoise. One night after vespers, a dark, shadowy figure appeared to him, with a bright circle around its neck and wearing a shirt with one sleeve. The figure revealed itself to be the soul of Máel Sechnaill mac Máele Ruanaid, a 9th-century Irish king. He claimed that his darkened appearance was the result of his sins staining his soul. The circle round his neck came from a ring he had given to a priest who failed to pray for him, and the one-sleeved shirt was the one he had given to pupils of the church who came to him, while he was alive, looking for a cloak for a poor student. The ghost revealed that he was in Hell and was being carried through the air, tormented by demons who were frightened away by the sound of Coirpre’s prayers.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and a soul in a hellmouth (Germany, 14th century): Add MS 15243, f. 12r
Coirpre agreed to pray for Máel Sechnaill and enlisted the twelve priests of the church to pray for his priest, who was also in Hell. A year later, Máel Sechnaill’s soul reappeared, visibly less stained by sin. Máel Sechnaill told Coirpre again of the horrors of Hell and asked him to continue praying and fasting. The next year he returned, radiant in appearance, and announced that Coirpre’s prayers had saved him from Hell and both he and his priest would ascend to Heaven.
Hundreds of years before M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft and John Carpenter, the Irish were telling stories of restless spirits, murderous corpses and otherworldly invaders. As Nera’s wife said, ‘the fairy-mounds of Ireland are always open on Samhain’.
Seosamh Mac Cárthaigh
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28 October 2021
Into the inferno
700 years after the death of the Florentine poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri (b. c. 1265, d. 1321), the exhibition Inferno has opened at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, Italy. Inspired by the infernal visions of Dante’s Divine Comedy, it explores the iconography of Hell, tracing its development and representation from the Middle Ages and the later Renaissance, all the way up to the modern era. In the process, it brings together some 235 works of art from over 80 museums and public and private collections across Europe. The British Library is delighted to be lending one of its most precious manuscripts, the Winchester Psalter (Cotton MS Nero C IV), to the exhibition, which will be on display at the museum from 15 October 2021 to 9 January 2022.
The Winchester Psalter appears in the first section of the exhibition, which explains the history of infernal iconography and highlights Dante’s interpretation of a centuries-old religious tradition in his writing. Made in the mid-12th-century, the manuscript is a bilingual copy of the Book of Psalms, written in Latin and Anglo-Norman French, the principal language of the aristocracy in England after the Norman Conquest. The book was probably commissioned by the Bishop of Winchester, Henry of Blois (b. c. 1096, d. 1171), younger brother to the English King Stephen (r. 1135-1154), and then housed at Winchester’s Old Minster.
The Psalter is notable for its extensive illustrative programme, with 39 pages of narrative illustrations of subjects from the Old and New Testaments prefacing the Psalms. They include scenes from the Books of Genesis and Exodus, the Life of the Virgin Mary, and the Life of Christ. The final image in this narrative sequence is a striking representation of the Last Judgement.
The Last Judgement scene is principally designed around an iconography known as the ‘Mouth of Hell’, the representation of the entrance to Hell as the mouth of a beast that swallows demons and the souls of the damned alike. The iconography developed towards the end of the 11th century in England and soon became a popular motif in art and literature across medieval Europe. It frequently appeared on the pages of illuminated manuscripts, where it featured in depictions of the Fall of the Angels, the Harrowing of Hell, and the Last Judgement.
The Winchester Psalter’s depiction of the hell-mouth is one of the most elaborate to survive from this period. It shows two gigantic creatures, with hairy bodies and bloodshot eyes, whose mouths meet to form a single gaping maw at the centre of the page. Within the dark abyss of the maw, we see horned devils and demons carrying whips, flails, and pitchforks, corralling a shifting mass of naked sinners. The crowd includes figures from all parts of medieval society, from kings and queens in golden crowns, to monks with tonsured heads, to lay people.
Overlooking the hell-mouth in the centre, a pair of dragonheads emerge from the folds in each creature’s neck, their long fangs forming the hinges of the red gates of Hell, which an archangel then locks with a large key. Meanwhile, a caption at the top of the page, written in Anglo-Norman French, states, ‘Ici est enfers et li angels ki enferme les porteis’ (Here is Hell and the angel who closes the doors).
You can visit Inferno and see the Winchester Psalter and its Last Judgement scene in person at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome from 15th October 2021 to 9 January 2022. The exhibition catalogue Inferno is edited by Jean Clair and published by Electa.
Calum Cockburn
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25 October 2021
More Harley manuscripts online
Two years ago, we announced that we had started to revise the online descriptions of manuscripts in the British Library's Harley collection. At that point, back in May 2019, relatively few of the Harley manuscripts were included in our Archives and Manuscripts catalogue (searcharchives.bl.uk), and so readers had to rely in most part on the entries in the old published catalogue, printed in 1808–12.
Miniature of the Tree of Jesse at the beginning of Psalm 1 (Rouen, around the 1490s, with additions made in England or the southern Netherlands): Harley MS 1892, f. 31v
Today, we can tell you that more than 3,500 Harley manuscripts, charters and rolls can now be found in our online catalogue, the result of many months of patient research and cataloguing, much of it done under the pressures of lockdown. Given that there are more than 7,600 Harley manuscripts, there is still some way to go, but a significant number of those written before the year 1600 (and many written after that date) now have updated records. You can read more about the Harley collection in our online guide.
A page at the beginning of An Senchas Már (Ireland, c. 1578): Harley MS 432, f. 4r
So which manuscripts have been added to our catalogue most recently? A brief list of their contents will give you some flavour of the range of the Harley collection, and the complexities of providing modern, accurate entries for them. For example, Harley MS 432 contains An Senchas Már, a 16th-century legal text written in Irish. We know that its scribe was Gilla na Naem Ó Deoráin, according to an inscription in ogham on f. 14r, and he was writing at Aninsi art Labadrais, possibly Inch Saint Lawrence (Co. Limerick). Harley MS 4775 contains the Gilte Legende, a Middle English prose translation of the Legenda Aurea. Its scribe was 'Ricardus Franciscus', who may have copied the text directly from another manuscript, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 372. Harley MS 4313 is a formulary for legal process in the Court of Arches at London, begun in the 1560s, and is typical of the sorts of administrative manuscripts that most interested Robert Harley, Lord High Treasurer under Queen Anne, and his son, Edward. Harley MS 1892, in turn, is a beautiful illuminated Psalter, made in Rouen in the late-15th century for an English patron, and subsequently heavily refurbished.
A page from the Gilte Legende (London, middle of the 15th century): Harley MS 4775, f. 237r
The credit for cataloguing the pre-1600s Harleys over the past 18 months should go to Clarck, Calum, Ellie, Peter, Kathleen, Seosamh, Chantry and other members of the Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts team. Despite the issues brought on by Covid, they were able to produce draft Harley records in many instances, which were then enhanced and completed when they returned to the office. We hope that this in turn will support other people's research and pleasure, and that it leads to us gaining a better understanding of medieval and early modern manuscript culture.
You can search for the Harley manuscripts on our online catalogue, and you can also browse the collection available so far.
Julian Harrison
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21 October 2021
Treasures on Tour in Cornwall
The latest leg of the British Library’s Treasures on Tour programme sees the loan of the Bodmin Gospels and Pascon Agan Arluth, a medieval Cornish poem on the Passion of Christ, to a new exhibition in Redruth. These manuscripts are on display from 23 October 2021 until 22 January 2022 at Kresen Kernow (‘Cornwall Centre’), in an exhibition entitled ‘Treasures from Medieval Cornwall’.
The Bodmin Gospels (Add MS 9381) is the earliest surviving manuscript known to have been in use in Cornwall. It was produced in Brittany towards the end of the 9th century, but by the 940s it had been taken to the Cornish priory of St Petroc. The priory was initially in Padstow, but subsequently relocated to Bodmin following Viking attacks.
The opening of the Gospel of Mark in the Bodmin Gospels: Add MS 9381, f. 50r
From the mid-10th to the 11th centuries, numerous scribes copied documents onto blank pages and into the margins around the text of the Gospels. These documents, known as manumissions, record the freeing of many enslaved individuals whose existence in Cornwall is not noted in any other sources. The text of some of the documents was erased in the past by scraping the ink off the parchment, but in recent years multispectral imaging has made these texts legible again.
The Bodmin Gospels is open at ff. 8v–9r in the exhibition in Redruth, showing a page with four added manumission documents on the left, opposite the first canon table, listing parallel passages in the four Gospels.
Copies of four manumission documents in the Bodmin Gospels: Add MS 9381, f. 8v
The first canon table in the Bodmin Gospels: Add MS 9381, f. 9r
On display alongside the Bodmin Gospels is Pascon Agan Arluth, a Cornish poem on the Passion of Christ (Harley MS 1782). This manuscript was written in the 15th century, and appears to be a copy of a text originally composed in the previous century, making it the earliest surviving complete Cornish text. It also includes 10 coloured drawings in the lower margins, and is the earliest known illustrated manuscript written in Cornish.
Pascon Agan Arluth, a Passion Poem in Cornish, with a coloured drawing of Christ before King Herod: Harley MS 1782, f. 9r
The narrative of the poem, written in 259 8-line stanzas, focuses on the story of the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus, drawing on the accounts found in the Gospels, with other additional material.
Pascon Agan Arluth, a Passion Poem in Cornish, with a coloured drawing of Christ carrying the Cross: Harley MS 1782, f. 14v
The project to develop Kresen Kernow, where the manuscripts are on display, was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Cornwall Council, to create a new home for Cornwall’s archives and gallery spaces, within the walls of the former Redruth Brewery. It opened in September 2019 and houses over 1.5 million manuscripts, maps and documents from Cornwall Record Office, as well as photographs, books and newspapers from the Cornish Studies Library, and the archaeological records and photographs from the Historic Environment Record.
The Kresen Kernow building in Redruth © Phil Boorman
The new exhibition in Redruth includes medieval items from Kresen Kernow’s own collection. It follows on from the display this summer of four early Cornish language play-scripts on loan from the Bodleian Library and the National Library of Wales: the Cornish Ordinalia; the Creation of the World; the Life of St Meriadoc (Bewnans Meriasek); and the Life of St Kea (Bewnans Ke).
‘Treasures from Medieval Cornwall’ opens to the public on Saturday 23 October 2021 and runs until Saturday 22 January 2022. More information on opening times and how to book free tickets is available on the Kresen Kernow website.
The Treasures on Tour programme is generously supported by the Helen Hamlyn Trust. The British Library is working with other libraries, museums and galleries to share our collections across the UK. Last year, as part of this programme, we loaned the Gospels of Máel Brigte to the Ulster Museum, as well as George Eliot’s manuscript of Middlemarch to Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery, and we will be announcing additional loans as part of ‘Treasures on Tour’ over the coming months.
Claire Breay
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19 October 2021
Antoine de Lonhy and the Saluces Hours
Long celebrated for its superb illuminations, the Saluces Hours (Add MS 27697) has been described by the art historian John Plummer as ‘one of the finest and most inventive manuscripts illuminated during the 15th century’. Yet it was only in 1989 that the art historian François Avril identified most of its miniatures as the work of Antoine de Lonhy, a prolific, multifaceted and well-travelled artist of the 15th century.
Antoine de Lonhy is the subject of a new exhibition, Il Rinascimento Europeo di Antoine De Lonhy (The European Renaissance of Antoine De Lonhy), which opened at the Palazzo Madama—Museo Civico d’Arte Antica in Turin on 7 October 2021, and will run until 9 January 2022. The Saluces Hours is a focal point of the exhibition, appearing in the first room together with a painting of Lonhy in the collection of the Palazzo Madama. Other works by Lonhy and his contemporaries include manuscripts, panel paintings, stained glass, sculptures and textiles. Visitors to the exhibition will also be able to view other miniatures from the manuscript shown digitally beside it.
The Saluces Hours is a manuscript with a complicated genesis. It was produced in Savoy, which in the 15th century was in independent duchy, and today comprises an area of southeast France and northwest Italy. The manuscript was originally begun around the 1440s, several decades before Lonhy’s involvement in the project. In this first stage, the text was probably completed and the process of illuminating the book begun. Some of the pictures and borders from this phase are attributed to Peronet Lamy (d. before 1453), an artist who worked for the court of Savoy from around 1432 to 1443, whose work is particularly apparent in the miniature of St John the Evangelist (f. 13r).
Another contemporary artist, known as the Master of the Hours of Louis of Savoy (after Paris, BnF, MS Lat. 9473) also contributed eight miniatures, as well as the historiated initials which accompany them. He might have done this concurrently with the original campaign of work, or perhaps he took over when Peronet Lamy stopped working on the book.
But for some reason, the project stalled and for over a decade the beautiful book was left unfinished. Then in around 1460-1470, Antoine de Lonhy took it up and completed it. As well as adding lots of new pictures, he also retouched the earlier artworks to increase the impression of stylistic coherence, and in some cases he may have painted on underdrawings made by the previous artists.
Although the book was originally intended for a male owner, as suggested by the inclusion of prayers which are grammatically phrased for the use of a man, Lonhy seems to have completed the new work for a woman. He painted her in an owner portrait, kneeling before the Virgin and Child and followed by two Franciscan saints, perhaps St Bernardino and St Anthony of Padua. She is gorgeously dressed in a fur-trimmed dress, a weighty gold collar, and a towering conical hat (know as a hennin).
Yet the identity of this glamorous owner has proved puzzling. The borders of the manuscript regularly feature the coat of arms of the Saluces family of Piedmont (argent a chief azure), as well as in two places the coat of arms of the d'Urfé family (vair a chief gules). Based on this heraldic evidence, it used to be thought that the owner was Aimée (or Amadée) de Saluces (b. 1420, d. 1473), daughter of Mainfroy de Saluces of Piedmont. Aimée married Guillaume-Armand de Polignac around 1441, and their daughter Catherine married Pierre d'Urfé in 1489.
However, scholars no longer agree with this identification because the manuscript does not contain the Polignac arms, despite dating stylistically from the period after Aimée’s marriage. Further, the coats of arms appear to be later additions to the manuscript, and probably do not refer to the woman who Lonhy worked for at all. It is more likely that both the original and later patrons of the Book of Hours, with its close similarities to the Hours of Louis of Savoy, were members of Savoy's Ducal family. It is now thought that the woman is possibly Yolande of France (b. 1434, d. 1478), wife of Duke Amadeus IX of Savoy.
We know more about the artist, Antoine de Lonhy, thanks to the work of art historians who have meticulously identified his works and reconstructed his career, now further elucidated in the exhibition and exhibition catalogue. Apparently French by birth, he seems to have started his career in the Duchy of Burgundy in the 1440s. By the 1450s he was documented working in Toulouse, and in 1460-62 he was working in Barcelona. He seems to have settled in Piedmont around 1462, and he worked on commissions in Savoy and Piedmont in around 1470-90. Dozens of his attributed artworks survive in a surprisingly wide variety of media, including panel paintings, illuminated manuscripts and stained glass.
Despite his wide-ranging travels, Antoine de Lonhy’s style is closely linked to the northern European Gothic art in which he was trained. The ornamental architecture in his pictures is always Gothic rather than Classical, although Classical architecture was flourishing in Italy at the time. His pictures show a depth of space and an interest in sweeping landscapes that suggests he was well versed in the work of great Flemish artists of the first half of the 15th century such as Jan Van Eyck and Roger Van der Weyden. His figures are softly modelled with sensitive faces, draperies that fall into elaborate deep folds, and sometimes strikingly lifelike anatomy, as illustrated in the picture of the naked Adam and Eve in the Saluces Hours.
To discover more about Antoine de Lonhy and see a great range of his works, visit the exhibition Il Rinascimento Europeo di Antoine De Lonhy at the Palazzo Madama—Museo Civico d’Arte Antica in Turin, from 7 October, 2021 to 9 January, 2022.
You can read more about the subject in exhibition catalogue, Il Rinascimento europeo di Antoine De Lonhy, ed. by Simone Baiocco e Vittorio Natale (Genova: SAGEP, 2021), and you can find further bibliography in our catalogue record. You can also view the Saluces Hours online on our Digitised Manuscripts website.
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01 October 2021
The travelling Bibles
What would a manuscript tell us if it could recount its travels and describe the places where it lived? The Locating a National Collection project, led by a team at the British Library, is exploring what place references can reveal about the ‘biography’ of historic objects. Does knowing that a precious manuscript is linked to a particular medieval abbey make it more interesting and relatable to us? Similarly, does knowing that a castle or a palace is connected to a rare medieval book help us to see it in a different light, and ultimately maybe even make us want to visit it?
To test this idea, and to discover how far following the footsteps of a manuscript can take us, the Locating a National Collection project has joined forces with the British Library’s medieval manuscript curators to dive into the Library's records and explore an exceptional story filled with great journeys, fortuitous discoveries and joyful reunifications. We thought that the best way to tell it was to use a map, or, better, an interactive one: a StoryMap. Scroll down to follow the tales of the travelling Bibles, click on the dots on the map to find more information about the places we mention along the way, and, if you are left wanting more, follow the links to other articles and resources.
We hope you enjoy your (virtual) journey.
Valeria Vitale and Gethin Rees
Locating a National Collection
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27 September 2021
A figured poem
The poem De Laudibus sancte crucis (In Praise of the Holy Cross) is the work of Rabanus Maurus (b. 780/781, d. 856), one of the greatest teachers and scholars of the Carolingian age. Rabanus Maurus was in charge of the imperial abbey school of Fulda in central Germany, and he was later archbishop of Mainz. While in Fulda, he composed this poem which comprises a set of verses where the words both embody and celebrate the cross, drawing on an Antique tradition of arranging words and phrases within figures.
A number of copies of this work survive, including one made in the Premonstratensian Abbey of St Mary and St Nicholas, Arnstein, in around the 1170s, now in the Harley collection in the British Library (Harley MS 3045). In all but one copy, the figured poem or carmina figurata is on the left, with an explanatory commentary in prose on the right-hand page. Most of the figures are in the form of a cross.
Rabanus Maurus dedicated one of his copies to Louis the Pious, King of the Franks and Emperor of the West from 814 to 840, and this dedication and image of the king is preserved in later copies. In the Harley copy, for example, Louis is depicted as a miles Christi (soldier of Christ), at the beginning of the work, with a cross, a shield and a halo. The inscriptions place the Emperor under the protection of Christ, while recalling his role as a defender and promoter of the Faith.
Some of the figures are in the form of letters rather than images, as in this one, which includes the words ‘Crux’ (cross), reading downwards, and ‘Salus’ (salvation), reading across. This poem is about angels, and the names of some of them are included in the figured letters. For example, the ‘u’ (shaped as a ‘v’) of Crux is formed from the word ‘arcangeli’ (archangels).
The author included an image of himself as well, portrayed as a kneeling monk below an image of a cross. His identity is made clear by the inclusion of his name ‘Rabanus’ in red letters visible on his face and habit.
Another elegant copy of De Laudibus sancte crucis was made in the abbey of St Germain des Prés in Paris around the middle of the 11th century (now Paris, BnF, MS latin 11685). This manuscript was digitised recently as part of The Polonsky Foundation Medieval England and France 700-1200 project.
You can can also find out about some of the other manuscripts made in Arnstein in our previous blogpost about the Arnstein Bible.
Kathleen Doyle
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Part of the Polonsky Digitisation Project
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