17 August 2019
In August, in a high season: the wondrous Pearl
You may be forgiven (especially if you're currently in London) that it's August, traditionally the time of the harvest and school summer holidays. This also happens to be the moment when Pearl, one of the masterpieces of Middle English literature, is set: 'in Augoste, in a hy seysone'.
Pearl was composed in the West Midlands region of England at the end of the 14th century. It survives in a single manuscript, held at the British Library, which also contains the unique copies of Patience, Cleanness and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Cotton MS Nero A X/2). You can view all four poems in full on our Digitised Manuscripts site, and you can also read about Pearl on Discovering Literature: Medieval.
Pearl is a moving work about grief and loss. The narrator, distraught at the loss of his ‘perle’, falls asleep and wakes in a garden with a jewelled stream. Looking across the stream he sees a beautiful maiden in white robes stitched with pearls. After a time, he realises that this woman is his dead two-year-old daughter. They engage in a discussion, as he attempts to reconcile his grief for her. The poem culminates in a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, derived from the Book of Revelation, in which the dreamer sees his daughter as a bride of Christ.
One of the most distinctive features of the manuscript is its cycle of illustrations, which were added to pages which had previously been left blank. The quality of this imagery has often been the subject of adverse comment, since they are not the work of an outstanding artist. We often feel, however, that they lend the poems their own idiosyncratic character, since every person has the same facial features and hairstyle, and the same simple palette of red, green, blue, yellow and white is used throughout.
The Pearl-manuscript is undeniably one of the jewels in the Library's medieval collections. We'd like to think that you might wish to read and re-read it, gazing upon the original handwriting and images, while sitting in your garden, sipping a cool drink, or else (more likely) sheltering indoors from the August rain. A high season indeed!
Pearl and the other poems are available on Digitised Manuscripts (Cotton MS Nero A X/2).
Julian Harrison
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
12 August 2019
Note-worthy connections: antique shorthand in Carolingian books
How do you find connections between contemporaneous manuscripts produced in different places? Sometimes the distinctive hand of a particular scribe is found in more than one manuscript, or the illustrations are likely to have been made by the same artist. At other times the makers of the manuscripts are unlikely to have been the same individuals, and yet their overall aspects and layout are strikingly similar—so similar that they are likely to be copies of the same exemplar. A connection of this last type between two 9th-century manuscripts – one in the British Library and one in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany – has recently been highlighted as a result of their digitisation.
Both manuscripts are copies of the late antique text Commentarii notarum tironianarum (Commentaries on Tironian notes). Tironian notes were an ancient Roman system of shorthand which get their name from their attribution to Tiro (b. 94, d. 4 BC), the slave and personal secretary of Cicero (b. 106, d. 43 BC). They are called notes after the Latin nota, but like the shorthand systems still in use today, they consist of abstract symbols which stand for words and syllables.
The British Library’s early-9th-century copy of this text (Add MS 37518) is one of the 800 manuscripts digitised for The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project. As increasing numbers of manuscripts become available online, it is easier than ever to compare their pages side by side. This is what happened when Joanna Story (Professor of Early Medieval History at University of Leicester and collaborator on the Library’s recent Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms-exhibition) recently researched this manuscript. She recognised the layout of its opening page from elsewhere, namely the near-contemporary manuscript, Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 9.8 Aug. 4°.
In the opening pages of both manuscripts, the decorated Tironian symbols and their abbreviations are arranged in the same positions in relation to one another. This makes it clear that they follow the same layout, despite the opening page of Add MS 37518 being left unfinished with only the dagger-shaped symbol for ab heavily outlined in black. At least 20 other early medieval guides to Tironian notes survive, but they rarely have this striking arrangement of the first three symbols. An example of a copy of this text with a different layout, included in a recent blogpost on writing systems, has also recently been digitised (Add MS 21164).
The commentaries contain a lexicon, or list of symbols and their meanings. This part of the text divides the symbols according to either topic or shape. The divisions are signalled by the writing of the first word of a group in capital script. These different groupings tend to begin in almost the same place in both the British Library and Herzog August Library copies (which are of a similar size), which further strengthens the impression that they were copied from a common, or very similar, exemplar.
Despite their roots in Classical antiquity, no antique manuscript examples of the commentaries on Tironian notes or of texts written in Tironian notes survive. Instead, the vast majority of evidence is found in Carolingian manuscripts. The Carolingian dynasty ruled over the territories of the Franks (roughly modern-day France, Belgium, Netherlands and Western Germany) from the mid-8th century, but gradually lost control over these territories throughout the late 9th and 10th centuries.
The Carolingian interest in shorthand was part and parcel of the revival of learning, art, and book production often known as the Carolingian Renaissance. In the Admonitio generalis (General admonition), an important collection of legislation issued in 789, the most famous Carolingian ruler, Charlemagne (r. 768-814), implored that schools be established for the learning of not only the Psalms, chant, and grammar, but also notae, or ‘written signs’.
Based on the surviving manuscript evidence, certain Carolingian monastic schools took a particular interest in Tironian notes. The scriptorium at Tours seems to have been one of the earliest centres to master this shorthand system, even including it in its famous illustrated pandect Bibles, such as the Moutier-Grandval Bible. Occasionally an entire book might be written in Tironian notes, such as this late 9th-century copy of the Psalms (Add MS 9046), which you can see in the British Library’s current exhibition, Writing: Making your Mark.
The schools that produced our two connected manuscripts – Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, and Saint-Amand, in north-eastern France – are c. 200 km apart. That they nonetheless seem to share a common exemplar demonstrates how closely connected Carolingian scholarly communities were.
Emilia Henderson, with thanks to Joanna Story
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
Part of the Polonsky Digitisation Project
In partnership with
Supported by
10 August 2019
Summer caption competition
We hope you're all having a lovely summer, wherever you are. If you're in the mood to unwind and relax, why not take part in our (semi-)regular caption competition? This image is taken from the sensational Silos Apocalypse (Add MS 11695, f. 170r), dating from the turn of the 11th/12th century. You can view it in full and for free online here.
What is going on in this picture? There are no prizes, but you can send your suggestions as a comment at the foot of this post, or by Twitter to @BLMedieval. We always love readibg the witty ideas you come up with!
04 August 2019
The birds and the bees
As many of our readers are aware, medieval manuscripts are an invaluable source for illustrations of cats and dogs and knights fighting snails. Some of our favourite images are of elephants, while western European attempts to accurately depict crocodiles and camels always make us smile. In this blogpost, we thought we would delight you with a selection of the charming pictures of birds and bees found in manuscripts in the British Library's collections.
The margins of this late 12th or early 13th-century of the Topography of Ireland by Gerald of Wales are adorned with a number of illustrations, including the dive-bombing osprey (shown above, Royal MS 13 B VIII, f. 9r) and the kingfishers and stork featured below (f. 9v). An equally famous image in the same book is that of St Kevin, who kept so still that a blackbird nested in the palm of his hand (f. 20r).
In a much later manuscript, known as the Hours of Dionora of Urbino (Yates Thompson MS 7), is found this border at the beginning of the Hours of the Virgin, containing this rather realistic blue tit and bullfinch separated by a roundel of John the Baptist (f. 14r).
Another manuscript we often look to for inspiration is Burney MS 97, made in Paris in the 1550s or 1560s. We are particularly fond of the heron (f. 4r), the pelican striking her breast to feed her young with the blood (f. 6r), and this rather fetching pair of owls (f. 10r).
Talking of owls, this rather important looking specimen is found in the border of the Hours of the Earls of Ormond (Harley MS 2887, f. 29r), at the beginning of the Annunciation. If you look carefully at the same border, you can also see a rather splendid peacock and a bear playing the bagpipes!
We couldn't resist showing you another peacock, this time alongside other birds, among them a hoopoe and a jay, in a cutting from a gospel lectionary of Pope Gregory XIII (Add MS 21412, f. 110r).
Finally for our birds, how about a little swan-upmanship? This first swan with its noble beak is found in a 13th-century English bestiary (Royal MS 12 C XIX, f. 39v), and would have surely won the prize were it not for the magnificent illustration of the constellation 'Cygnus', made in 9th-century France (Harley MS 647, f. 5v).
When it comes to bees, we are also spoilt for choice. How about the beehives in an Italian herbal (Sloane MS 4016, f. 57v), with a duck in an English bestiary (Harley MS 3244, f. 57v), or with the bear looking suspiciously like a medieval Winnie the Pooh (Harley MS 3448, f. 10v)?
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
25 July 2019
Marvellous monsters
Medieval writers typically relied on Classical texts for their knowledge of the world beyond Europe. The Roman and Greek sources which they consulted informed them that legendary people inhabited distant regions. One of the most influential works was the Natural History of the Roman author Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79). Pliny described people with the heads of dogs (Cynamolgi) and four feet (Artabatiae) in Ethiopia, and with horses’ hooves as feet (Hippopodes) in the Baltic.
A hybrid figure in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia (England, 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 12th century): Arundel MS 98, f. 85v
The Classical 'monstrous' people also feature in the Etymologies of the Spanish author Isidore of Seville (570–636). Isidore, who considered such strange beings to be signs of God, claimed that Libya was home to the Blemmyae, a headless people who had their mouths and eyes in their chest, and the Antipodes (‘opposite-footed’), a people whose feet pointed upward. In India, Isidore located the dog-headed people called Cynocephali (‘dog-headed’) and the Cyclopes (‘round-eyed’), a people with one eye in the middle of their foreheads. Ethiopia was supposedly inhabited by the Sciapodes ('shade-footed'), having a single leg with a large foot which they used to shade under during extreme heat.
Isidore of Seville depicted at the opening of the Etymologiae (France, 4th quarter of the 12th century): Add MS 15603, f. 1r
Tales of marvellous inhabitants were often included in descriptions of the regions outside Europe. For example, the early 8th-century Cosmography, a fictitious travelogue of a certain ‘Aethicus Ister’, reported that a dog-headed people lived on a northern island above Britain. In Scythia, female warriors known as Amazons reared the cubs of minotaurs (half-man, half-bull) and centaurs (half-man, half-horse) and trained them to fight in war.
‘In solitudinibus catulos minotauros invenisse’ (‘[The Amazons] discovered minotaur cubs in deserted places’, trans. by Michael W. Herren, Cosmography (2011), p. 157), in the Cosmographia (France or England, early 12th century): Harley MS 3859, f. 273r
Testament to the popularity of these tales is a 12th-century Bible from Arnstein Abbey in Germany (Harley MS 2799). On a page that was originally left blank have been drawn seventeen legendary people, including the Cynocephali, Cyclopes, Blemmyae (first row), and Sciapods (third row).
Legendary people added to the Arnstein Bible (Germany, c. 1172): Harley MS 2799, f. 243r
The existence of strange peoples became a popular theme in medieval accounts of Christian conversion. These works signalled that, if even 'monsters' could be taught Christianity, there should be no reason why the entire world could not be converted as well. The so-called Letter of Prester John is an example of this: it purports to be a letter from a priest named John addressed to Manuel of Constantinople and Frederick Barbarossa in 1163. The priest claims to govern a powerful kingdom in India, filled with gold and jewels, and inhabited by strange creatures that have converted to Christianity. The letter claims that the kingdom has:
‘sagitarii, homines agrestes, homines cornuti, fauni, satiri et mulieres eiusdem generis, pigmei, cenocephali, gygantes, quorum altitudo est quadraginta cubitorum, monoculi, cyclopes et a vis, quae vocactur fenix, et fere omne genus animailum, quae sub caelo sunt’.
(‘archers [i.e. centaurs], savage men, horned men, fauns, satyrs and women of the same race, pygmies, dog-headed men, giants whose height is 40 cubits, one-eyed men, cyclopses and a bird which is called ‘phoenix’, and almost every kind of animal which is under heaven’, trans. by Keagan Brewer, Prester John (2015), p. 69)
Unusual races listed in the Letter of Prester John (London, 1st quarter of the 13th century): Add MS 14252, f. 92v
The association between monstrous people and conversion to Christianity perhaps explains why the artist of an early 13th-century English Psalter (Arundel MS 157) chose to paint a figure that looks like a Sciapod at the opening line of Psalm 84:5: ‘Converte nos, Deus salutaris noster’ (‘Convert us, God our saviour’). However, the Sciapod — who appears to be lying upside down in order to find shade under his foot — could also be a pun on the Psalm verse, since the Latin word convertere can be translated both as ‘convert’ and ‘turn upside-down’.
A ‘converted’ Sciapod (England, 1st quarter of the 13th century): Arundel MS 157, f. 182v
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
Part of the Polonsky Digitisation Project
In partnership with
Supported by
21 July 2019
The first man on the Moon
This weekend, the world is remembering Apollo 11, the first Moon landing, and the two astronauts who first stepped unto the lunar surface on 21 July 1969. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to walk on another astronomical body, in what was to become one of the most earth-shaking events of the 20th century.
While Armstrong and Aldrin were the first humans on the Moon, there is a figure in medieval literature who may have got there first, around Easter 1300.* In the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri describes his fantastical journey down into the nine circles of Hell, upwards on the Mount of Purgatory, and away through the spheres of Heaven: from Inferno to Purgatorio and into Paradiso. Written in Italian in the early 14th century, Dante’s Comedy is one of the most influential poems of all time, a synthesis of medieval culture, science, philosophy, theology, scholarship and political science.
[* Nor should we forget Chang'e 嫦娥, the Chinese goddess of the Moon, who, according to legend, has been living there for some 4,000 years.]
In the Comedy, Dante-the-pilgrim travels through the afterworlds in search of self-knowledge and truth, driven by the desire for union with the divine. Passing through Hell and Purgatory, he is ready to ascend to the stars in Heaven, guided and instructed by the fascinating figure of Beatrice. Dante’s complex Heaven is made out of concentric spheres, each corresponding to a heavenly body in the cosmological system inherited from classical antiquity and modified by Christian thought. Outside the seven planetary spheres (including the Sun in this geocentric model), there is the sphere of the fixed stars, the first mover and the Empyrean, enclosing all the others but lying beyond time and space. To arrive there, the pilgrim must first pass through the sphere of the Moon, located closest to Earth.
This diagram shows the structure of the Universe according to the Ptolemaic geocentric model. Earth is surrounded by the nine heavenly circles: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Fixed Stars and First Mover: Harley MS 3647, f. 22v
Dante’s launch from the Earth’s atmosphere opens Paradiso, the third and last section of the Divine Comedy. Comparing his journey upwards to sailing a little ship into the unknown, he explains in classicizing language that he is the first on this kind of mission. In Allen Mandelbaum’s translation:
The waves I take were never sailed before;
Minerva breathes, Apollo pilots me,
and the nine Muses show to me the Bears. (Paradiso, 2.7–9)
Fly me to the Moon: Dante and Beatrice launch towards the Moon in this Tuscan manuscript of the Divine Comedy from around 1444: Yates Thompson MS 36, f. 131r
Dante is on his own Apollo mission to the stars. Illustrated manuscripts of the Divine Comedy typically depict his journey as a flight upwards. The Moon is usually identified by its colour and partial phase, to distinguish it from other celestial bodies. In a manuscript painted in Florence in the 1440s (Yates Thompson MS 36), Dante’s lunar mission is remarkably faithful to the poetic text quoted above: the illustration depicts the boat sailing away from familiar, agricultural shores, while Minerva blows from a cloud. The pilgrim is being led by the figure of Apollo, as the chorus-like group of Muses point towards a star (presumably the Northern Star).
Dante’s first stop on the Moon is a giant leap of imagination, but a small step in the traveller’s consciousness, as he instantanously makes a landing:
Beatrice gazed upward. I watched her.
But in a span perhaps no longer than
an arrow takes to strike, to fly, to leave
the bow, I reached a place where I could see
that something wonderful drew me; and she
from whom my need could not be hidden, turned
to me (her gladness matched her loveliness):
“Direct your mind to God in gratefulness,”
she said; “He has brought us to the first star.” (Paradiso 2.22–30)
Propelled by love, Dante’s imaginative mind-capsule lands on the surface of the Moon, whereupon he starts inquiring about the nature of the ‘dark spots’ on the lunar surface. In his own, inquisitive way, Dante-the-traveller is collecting information about the Moon. Armstrong and Aldrin brought 21kg of lunar material back to Earth. Dante gathered information which he took with him to Mercury, his next stop.
Beatrice teaches Dante about moonspots; the landscape looks strangely lunar: Egerton MS 943, f. 131r
Burning with the desire to know more, Dante reaches the Moon, where the blessed can answer his questions: Yates Thompson MS 36, f. 132r
The year before Apollo 11, three astronauts travelled to the Moon, orbited it, and returned safely to Earth. One of them, William Anders, took a famous photograph of the Earth from the lunar orbit known as Earthrise. Dante took no photographs on his interstellar voyage, but he left us a poetic description of Earth from the heaven of the fixed stars, outside the planetary spheres:
And all the seven heavens showed to me
their magnitudes, their speeds, the distances
of each from each. The little threshing floor
that so incites our savagery was all —
from hills to river mouths — revealed to me
while I wheeled with eternal Gemini. (Paradiso 21.148–153)
‘The little threshing floor’, the insignificant dot in the immensity of the cosmos, evokes in the reader of the Divine Comedy the same thoughts as Anders’ Earthrise photograph. The onward and upward quest of discovery and knowledge, whether medieval or modern, concludes with a gaze on ourselves and with an affirmation of responsibility for the future.
20 July 2019
Art and science in Renaissance Italy
Here at the British Library we’re big fans of Renaissance art and science. It’s the subject of our current exhibition, Leonardo da Vinci: A Mind in Motion (7 June–8 September 2019), and we also have a display about it in our permanent free exhibition space, The Treasures Gallery. Here’s a sneak peek of some of the beauties you can see in the Treasures display.
Early Renaissance Italy witnessed a remarkable flowering of the arts and sciences. Humanist scholars looked to medieval libraries to discover works from the past, which they copied, studied and developed in new ways. They were particularly interested in discovering classical works of ancient Greek and Roman culture, building on the movement to recover classical texts that had been taking place since the 12th century. But they were also stimulated by works of medieval science, both from the Latin and Arabic traditions.
The increased study of plants during the Renaissance lead towards the development of the modern field of botany. In medieval Europe, knowledge about plants and their medicinal properties was transmitted in illustrated manuscripts known as herbals. They were based on ancient Latin and Greek sources, compiled and updated by medieval scholars. In the Renaissance, people started to revise herbals based on first-hand examinations of plants. This manuscript, known as the Codex Bellunensis, is largely an adaptation of the ancient work on medicinal plants, De Materia Medica by the Greek physician Dioscorides. But it also includes observations of local flora, in this case from the lower Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy. On the left is the earliest known representation of the plant edelweiss, shown alongside eupatorium, agrimony and valerian.
Renaissance scholars also looked to the Arabic world as a source of knowledge. This manuscript contains De aspectibus, a Latin translation of Kitāb al-Manāẓir (Book of Optics) by the 11th-century Arabic scholar Ibn al-Haytham, known in Latin as Alhazen. This work was the first to systematically demonstrate that vision is the result of light reflecting off objects and entering the eye. The book also includes ‘Alhazen's problem’, a mathematical problem concerning the reflection of light from spherical mirrors that was not solved algebraically until 1965. Translated into Latin around 1200, the work was carefully studied by western thinkers such as Roger Bacon (c.1219/20–c.1292) and Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519). The pages shown here examine the subject of binocular vision, with the diagrams illustrating how the visual axes of the two eyes, labelled ‘a’ and ‘g’, intersect.
The Aratea is a poem about the ancient constellations and their mythological origins. It was originally written in Greek by the ancient poet Aratus in the 3rd century BC. This particular Latin translation was made in around AD 14–19 by the Roman general Germanicus, who was the nephew of the emperor Tiberius, the father of Caligula and the grandfather of Nero, no less. The poem was an important source for the study of astronomy throughout the Middle Ages, but the humanist interest in rediscovering authentic classical texts led to a surge in its popularity in 15th-century Italy. This copy belonged to Francesco Sassetti of Florence (1421–90), a prominent banker for the Medici family. The pages on display describe and illustrate the constellations closest to the north celestial pole, Ursa Major (the Great Bear), Ursa Minor (the Lesser Bear), and Draco.
To see these manuscripts in person, come and visit the Treasures Gallery at the British Library. To learn even more about Renaissance achievements in art and science, don’t miss our current exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: A Mind in Motion at the British Library from 7 June until 8 September 2019.
Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
18 July 2019
Magical seals in an English Book of Hours
In addition to containing the daily cycle of prayer, Books of Hours sometimes include magical spells or incantations, reflecting their lay owners' concerns over physical and spiritual dangers. Stowe MS 16, a Book of Hours produced in London shortly before 1410, is an interesting example. This manuscript is mainly known to scholars because it includes a miniature of the Annunciation that has been attributed to Herman Scheerre (fl. c. 1388–c. 1422), a Flemish or German illuminator who was one of the most influential artists in early 15th-century England.
The Hours of the Virgin Mary (London, c. 1410): Stowe MS 16, f. 9r
But another remarkable feature of Stowe MS 16 has so far gone unnoticed: a 15th-century owner — perhaps ‘George Rotherham’, who inscribed his name on a flyleaf — added four circular diagrams that, as their accompanying inscriptions explain, represent ‘seals’ that offered supernatural protection. The first is referred to as the ‘Seal of Solomon’, alluding to an ancient legend according to which the biblical King Solomon owned a seal ring with an engraved hexagram or pentagram, that enabled him to command demons. It formed the basis for a tradition of pseudo-Solomonic seals that flourished during the later Middle Ages. The inscription that accompanies the seal in Stowe MS 16 instructs the reader to use it as an amulet in battle: ‘Hoc signum Salamonis qui super se portaverit nec manu in bello erit captus’ (‘Whosoever will carry the seal of Solomon on themselves will not be captured in battle’).
The Seal of Solomon: Stowe MS 16, f. 151r
The owner of Stowe MS 16 also added incantations against ‘seven sisters’ (‘septem sorores’), fever demons who are named after seven types of fever, followed by three more magical seals that offered protection against enemies, water and fire, and evil. The inscription on the first seal reads: ‘Hoc signum fer [te]cum contra omnes inimicos’ (‘Carry this seal with you against all enemies’).
Three magical seals: Stowe MS 16, f. 152r
Magical seals were not usually copied into prayer books. Instead, they circulated in medical and magical manuscripts. For example, one 15th-century English medical manuscript (Royal MS 17 B XLVIII) contains a seal for thunderstorms: ‘Quando audieris tonitruum respice hoc signum et liberaberis; In nomine patris’ (‘When you hear thunder, look at this seal and you will be freed – In the name of the Father’).
A seal against lightning (England, 15th century): Royal MS 17 B XLVIII, f. 1r
Magical seals were also copied onto separate parchment leaves that could be worn as amulets. One such leaf, now bound into Add MS 36674, contains on one side a so-called ‘Heavenly Letter’. This letter, invoking the divine names of God, was purportedly sent by Pope Leo III to Charlemagne in order to protect him in battle. On the leaf’s other side, thirty-two seals have been drawn in red ink. These complement the Heavenly Letter’s purpose since they claim to protect their user against imprisonment, wounds and death in battle.
Thirty-two magical seals (England, late 16th century–early 17th century): Add MS 36674, f. 111r
Another separate amulet leaf with magical seals is now bound into Add MS 15505. The amulet, produced in early 16th-century Italy, features a large circular diagram with ten magical seals inside it. At its centre is a seal with a ‘cross crosslet’ and the magical formula ‘AGLA’. It is circumscribed with the name ‘Antonius’ — probably referring to St Anthony of Egypt, who was often invoked against the plague — and is surrounded by eight more seals that provide protection against demons, enemies, evil and misfortune. The seals contain magical inscriptions such as ‘SATOR AREPO’, a popular magical formula that had been used on amulets for centuries (another example is found in Egerton MS 821). Each seal is flanked by the Greek letters ‘Chi’ and ‘Rho’, representing the name of Christ.
Nine magical seals (Italy, early 16th century): Add MS 15505, f. 22r
Magical seals were also copied onto amulet rolls. On one 15th-century English roll (Harley Roll T 11), they have been combined with devotional items such as the ‘Measure of the Side Wound’. This lozenge-shaped image purports to represent the true size of the wound in Christ’s side, inflicted when the Roman soldier Longinus pierced him with his lance. The accompanying text claims that when pregnant women wear the image on their bodies during childbirth, it will protect both them and their children. This suggests that the amulet roll may have been used as a birthing girdle, making particularly relevant its seals for staunching bleeding wounds and against sudden death (without having received the last rites).
Magical seals and the Measure of the Side Wound (England, 15th century): Harley Roll T 11, f. 1r
Magical seals for staunching bleeding wounds and against sudden death: Harley Roll T 11, f. 2r
No less than sixty-three magical seals were copied onto a 17th-century English amulet roll (Add MS 25311). Many are aimed against evil spirits, but others against material and physical dangers: for example, it includes seals against venomous snakebites and poverty. The roll may have served as a multi-purpose amulet, or as a model from which single seals were copied onto smaller amulets.
Magical seals against evil spirits [1st column, 1st to 3rd rows], venomous snakes [2nd column, 5th row] and poverty [3rd column, 5th row] (England, 17th century): Add MS 25311
The owner of Stowe MS 16 who added the four magical seals to the manuscript probably copied them from the sort of medical or magical manuscripts that are shown here. In doing so, they evidently wanted to give their Book of Hours protective properties so that, in carrying it with them for their daily prayers, it would function equally as an amulet.
Medieval manuscripts blog recent posts
- A knight's tale
- Annual manuscripts weigh-in
- Curator of Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts
- Medieval Women exhibition
- Chaucer at the Bodleian
- Interim information sources for British Library manuscripts
- Garendon cartulary acquired by the British Library
- Chaucer’s works go online
- The largest Greek manuscript?
- PhD Studentship opportunity: Medieval Women's Religious Communities
Archives
Tags
- Africa
- Alexander exhibition
- Ancient
- Anglo-Saxons
- Animals
- Black & Asian Britain
- British Library Treasures
- Calendars
- Classics
- Decoration
- Digital scholarship
- Early modern
- Elizabeth and Mary exhibition
- English
- Events
- Exhibitions
- Fashion
- Featured manuscripts
- French
- Gold exhibition
- Greek
- Harry Potter
- Humanities
- Illuminated manuscripts
- International
- Ireland
- Latin
- Law
- Leonardo
- LGBTQ+
- Literature
- Magna Carta
- Manuscripts
- Maps
- Medieval
- Medieval history
- Middle East
- Middle east
- Modern history
- Music
- Olympics
- Palaeography
- Polonsky
- Printed books
- Rare books
- Research collaboration
- Romance languages
- Royal
- sacred texts
- Sacred texts
- Science
- Scotland
- Slavonic
- South East Asia
- Visual arts
- Women's histories
- Writing