Author: Vincent Wong

Vincent is a librarian at the Digital Innovations team in NTU Library, and is an alumni, having earned his Bachelors from the English Programme at the School of Humanities, as well as his Masters in Information Studies from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. He likes to spend his free time looking for literary influences in pop culture.
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The Temple

by Kelly Lee

This book in front of you is The Temple, a collection of religious poems by the renowned poet George Herbert.

This edition consists of three separate texts:

  1. The Temple. Sacred Poems And Private Ejaculations (by Mr George Herbert)
  2. The Synagogue: or, the Shadow of the Temple. Sacred Poems, And Private Ejaculations (in imitation of Mr George Herbert) (by Christopher Harvey)
  3. The Life of Mr. George Herbert (by Izaak Walton)

While The Synagogue being written in imitation of the deceased Herbert may seem odd, it was common back then, with the number of authors imitating a particular author being a metric for their popularity. It could also be to display appreciation for Herbert’s religious approach. This idea of imitation can be reflected in modern-day fanfiction, literary retellings and adaptations. 

Ownership

One past owner, “Mary L. Dawson”, wrote her name on the title page. While we were unable to pinpoint the exact individual, this could give us valuable insight into how women engaged with faith and literature at a time when their role and access to such were limited.

Form

Looking at the book as an object/artefact, one eye-catching detail is the peek of orange from the pages. Although its bright orange shade looks modern, it is an old and common type of restoration for a torn page (before scotch tape). Melted wax was poured at the edge of the tear and patched up with an old page. The restoration can be estimated to be as old as the book as the scrap paper looks similar to the book’s pages. 

Front 1

Front 2

Back 

Annotations

The reader’s underlines, curly brackets and marginal annotations are similar to modern-day annotations, revealing that personal engagement with texts may have remained largely unchanged over centuries. The book also has many poem-to-poem references, where the past reader links one poem to another in the book, noting down the title and page number of the corresponding poem. On the left page of the item, next to the title “Good Friday”, there is a curly bracket and the note “Sacrifice 18” – referring to the poem “Sacrifice” on page 18 of the book.  This was likely due to their similar theme of sacrifice, with the suffering of Christ on Good Friday. Readers today, especially students and scholars, similarly make connections between texts.

Another type of annotation present is biblical verses, where the reader quotes scripture in relation to the poem. An example can be seen at the top right corner of the item for the poem “Good Friday”.

J 4 11 (John 4:11)

“Wearied with sin”

J 11:35 (John 11:35) “Jesus wept”

These again link to the poem’s focus on Christ’s suffering and sacrifice. Such annotations reveal how past readers may have linked scripture to literature, similar to how modern religious communities do in Bible study.

This item ultimately may offer us insight into how literature shaped devotion in the past—deepening faith through poetry and reflective reading.

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Tibère, Discours Politiques sur Tacite

by Aidil Yassin bin Mohamad Faisal

Tibère, Discours Politiques sur Tacite is a 342-year-old French leather-bound hardcover book edited by du Sieur de la Mothe-Josseval, d’Aronsel, later revealed as the pseudonym of Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de la Houssaye 3 years after its publication.

Upon observation on the exterior, the binding is likely to be leather with gold-tooling on the spine. Gold-tooling is a historical practice providing a touch of elegance and represents a high level of craftsmanship due to its intense attention to detail. On the spine, the book details are displayed on a sticker, and the letters have been letterpress printed, one of the oldest traditional printing techniques. Additionally, there are post-it flags serving as a modern addition to an old book, suggesting a recent reader has been actively referencing the text.

In the book, the paper is printed. On the first page, there is a name and year written on the top right, “Frederic … Wittgenstein acheté à Marbourg 1786”. It is most likely an indication of their ownership of the book. The other annotations on that page present a bunch of numbers, assuming to be its storage numbers. The ink colour and the handwriting of both annotations are different from each other, suggesting they were not written by the same person.

For the title page, someone has cancelled out the author’s name letter by letter, and written an annotation underneath it. This is most likely a deciphering method, where the reader is trying to figure out the author’s real name; from a pseudonym “De La Mothe-Josseval” to “De La Houssaie/Houssaye”. The handwriting is different from the one on the first page, suggesting Frederic did not decipher it.

Moving on to the post-it flags, someone has written page numbers on it, like for page 377 of the book, they wrote “p.377”.  What is interesting, though, is what the flags represent. This book has lived through centuries, yet it is still interacted with in modern ways. The flags’ presence suggests that someone in the 20th to 21st century was engaging with it; the book was never just for decorative or storage value, it has become a functional object for readers in our time.

Then, there are these beautiful dried flowers serving as bookmarks on some of the pages; indicating a sentimental value for the reader who has placed them. Flowers, generally, are seen as symbols of beauty. In this way, it shows love, care, and appreciation for the book that has surpassed through many centuries. A few of its flowers even have a piece of paper attached onto it with handwritten texts. It could be the reader’s interpretations of certain book passages.

Overall, this book presents itself as not just something of an artifact, but a bridge between different centuries of readers. The annotations give us different information and might come from different times, yet they coexist in the same book, showing how books are continuously engaged with.

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Formulare Anglicanum

Formulare Anglicanum: An Afterlife in Itself

The Formulare Anglicanum is a compilation of various British charters (referred to as ‘formulas’) and legal instruments from 1066 to 1647, gathered by Thomas Madox from archives such as that in the Office of Augmentations where he worked. This copy of Formulare Anglicanum hardly seems to have entered its afterlife stage. Interestingly, this book has remained in rather good condition. Its binding and spine remain intact with some evidence of the wear it has experienced over the centuries. Its leaves are mostly well-preserved, with the exception of some minuscule brown spots and fading on the words. Some leaves have tears in the borders from repeated creasing in the same area, presumably due to extensive use by its previous owners. Objectively, many modern books have fared worse.

Figure 1: Browning and spots on a leaf

Figure 2: A tear in the border

What is fascinating is that Formulare Anglicanum isn’t just well-preserved; it also seeks to preserve well. It is itself an exhibition of other books, considering that it collects legal instruments and charters from such an extensive period of time in Britain’s history and enables readers to identify original legal documents. Furthermore, it is not simply a compilation, as Madox had to make some additional editorial choices. For instance, he categorised the various charters by types, such as grants and wills, and by dates to document developments in the British legal scene over the years. However, he was also concerned that these headings were inadequate to classify all the documents and that he might have wrongly categorised some of them – given the differences in language used, it was not always clear which category they fell under.

Figure 3: The “Table of the Heads” (table of contents) which lists the categories in which Madox classified the documents, and their page and formula numbers

Formulare Anglicanum implicitly acknowledges the significant effect of time on a book. There are a few leaves that document the various official seals and scripts used over time from the reigns of different British monarchs.

Figure 4 (left): Examples of the official seals over the reigns of different monarchs

Figure 5 (right): Examples of the various scripts used over the reigns of different monarchs

These leaves help users of the book to identify important details of legal documents of the past as well as to verify their authenticity. These notable features take into account how the law is constantly updated and older documents may become unfamiliar to readers of the present. In the margins, Madox also included his own descriptions in English explaining the purpose of each charter, which are particularly helpful given that many of the charters are in Latin or French. Many of these documents also have notes detailing their physical characteristics. These additional descriptions enable easier comprehension of the documents and for documents that have since undergone physical changes, they record their original features. 

Figure 6: A document labelled as “A Certificate or Memoire”, with notes by Madox describing its physical details such as the green wax seal once used on it. “O. A.” refers to the Office of Augmentations. 

When we think of the afterlife of the book, we should note that it is not just its physical form that can disintegrate; its content can progressively lose its original purpose. By including detailed descriptions of the documents, Madox preserved the knowledge to ensure that the original documents never really enter their afterlives and can continue to be comprehended and identified. However, Madox also worried that he could not accurately capture the original meanings of the documents, which calls into question just how much of the book can be preserved, and how much of it will eventually find its way into its afterlife despite our best efforts.

Prepared by Nana

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Manuscript miscellany

This book owes its striking appearance to the paper used to bind it: sheet music printed in red and black ink. This music is notated in neumes, a visually distinctive system traditionally used to represent the melodic contours of Christian plainchant. The chants represented here are in Latin and would originally have been sung in a context of religious worship.

While a modern reader might expect the contents of the book to be printed, as signalled by the printed material that forms its cover, the book’s interior is actually manuscript: handwritten text. A variety (or miscellany) of texts, with topics ranging from theology to medicine to the law, has been hand-copied into the book. Perhaps surprisingly, given the book’s distinctive appearance, none of the texts appears to be especially concerned with music.

Based on the consistent style of penmanship, the various texts in this book all appear to have been copied by the same person. Given their wide-ranging subjects, they were likely selected based on this individual’s tastes and interests; the owner also made personal notes on some of the content. Though the handwriting is consistent, the person who copied the texts used a range of devices to mark the end of any particular text (pictured below), including writing the word “Finis”, drawing seemingly random squiggles, and a series of shortening lines that form a kind of inverted triangle shape. These flourishes interrupt the monotony of the book’s many pages of neat blocks of writing, making the ending of each individual text distinctive.

The consistent layout of words on each page is guided by the impression of margins and individual lines upon the paper. Each page in the book is fairly thick, and the guiding rules appear to have been imprinted onto the pages. These impressions create a surface that is conveniently divided for the writer’s ease in laying out their content onto the page. As they are seemingly formed through pressure (perhaps upon the wet page as it is made) rather than through the application of ink, these lines are also unobtrusive for the book’s reader. The book includes some pages with no writing on them, strongly suggesting that the book was bound before its pages were written on. It is on these blank pages that we can most clearly appreciate the stamped margins.

While the books’ contents are handwritten rather than printed, the sheet music visible as its cover is not the only print element present in the book’s form. From the top of the book’s spine, we can just make out a few words of printed text – seemingly not music, as with the cover, but regular text. These scraps of paper seem to be smaller than the sheet music, and used specifically to reinforce the spine of the codex rather than to hold the whole structure together or decorate it. The contrast between the internally- and externally-facing print elements suggest a particular attention to aesthetics on the part of those who created this book, while signalling their interest in repurposing existing printed materials.

Prepared by Andrew

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Decameron

The Afterlife of the Afterlife of a Book

The Decameron is a collection of short stories by the Renaissance Italian poet and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375), for which he is famous. Written in the years between 1349 to 1353, the Decameron consists of an overarching main narrative of ten Florentines, all of whom have escaped from the ongoing plague in the city of Florence to a villa in an Italian town called Fiesole. Each individual, pegged to a day, offers to tell a couple of short tales, and the Decameron contains all these stories told over ten days by the ten Florentines. Each day also concludes in a canzone (a type of Italian ballad), and these songs are representative of the best poetry by Boccaccio. This text that inspired countless other Renaissance writers, for dealing with humanist themes, and highly engaging narrative.

This copy is a dilapidated French edition of the Decameron, printed in 1603. Here, we are interested in the afterlife of books, and this copy of the Decameron is filled with clues that point beyond its intended shelf life.

Fig 1. Cover of the 1603 French edition of the “Decameron”. Both printed text and handwritten inscriptions are legible.

As we can see from just the cover page, the inside of the volume is in a fair condition: the ink is still extremely clear and legible. We also see signs of direct inscription – above the center of the crest, in slightly faded ink, handwritten cursive words spelling “Sum Pauli Prunmaisteri” (“I belong to Paul Prunmaister”). This gives us the name of one owner the book has had in its lifetime. Similar inscriptions in that color of ink were found on the first leaf of the codex, behind the front board, but nowhere else in the contents of the book. The lack of annotations suggest that the book was likely not used for scholarly purposes.

            Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this codex is in its binding, which has largely fallen into disarray:

Fig 2. The exposed binding.

Here, we see how scraps of waste print are used as part of the binding material, sewn together by cords (the rope-like threads wound across the spine). We can claim here that the afterlife of failed books has ironically been exposed in the extreme weathering that characterizes the afterlife of this particular codex. There is an ingenuity to be found in the binders’ use of waste print to bind complete texts, such that even waste print produced by the printers are not actually wasted. It is not clear as to what sort of physical trauma has led to the removal of a segment of the parchment that originally concealed the spine.

            One final major sign of decay is the presence of cavities towards the end of the codex:

Fig 3. Cavities in the later pages.

There can only be one cause for such damage: bookworms. These are not real worms, but the larvae of various species that may chew through books seeking food.

            Despite the literary significance of the text it was translated from, this codex has fallen into disrepair over many centuries, surviving long enough just to be a monument to poor bookkeeping.

Prepared by Lune

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The Floral Gift (1863)

 The Floral Gift: A Thing of Beauty, A Joy For Ever

            Publications such as The Floral Gift were popular novelty pieces in mid-19th century England. Decorated with floreated borders and embellished with illuminated initials, this particular book features a collection of poetry connected under the common theme of flowers, with some even attributed to popular literary figures such as Wordsworth and Shakespeare. Gift-books such as The Floral Gift were designed to attract buyers and impress their recipients, being typically bound with brightly-coloured cloth and intricate gilt patterns. Published in 1863, the first edition of this text was bound with both green and red Morroco-style binding (Fig. 1). Other common titles often included names of gemstones, holidays, special occasions, and anniversaries. While the publication of such books eventually declined by the 1860s, these works nevertheless stand as testaments to the development of sophisticated industrial techniques such as chromolithograph printing–a unique method of making multi-coloured images by numerous applications of stone plates, each using a different ink colour.  

Fig. 1: The green and red covers of the 1863 edition.

            Since most of the books belonging to this genre were lavishly illustrated and visually appealing, gift-books were more often than not prized for their extrinsic beauty. Indeed, some of them were even explicitly advertised as works of “fine art”. Illuminated by Samuel Stanesby, the accompanying illustrations within the margins of The Floral Gift bear thematic correspondence to their written contents, such as how the set of poems based on “Violets” are appropriately framed with motifs of that particular flower (Fig. 2). Designed for display and admiration rather than for heavy reading, the contents of such books tended to be derivative in nature, as seen here in the reproduction of poetic phrases taken from different literary sources such as P. V. de Montgomery’s Hours of Sun and Shade (1891) (Page 1) and Shakespeare’s sonnets (Page 2). It comes as no surprise, then, that Victorian gift-books acquired a reputation for being of low cerebral quality. 

Fig. 2: The page on “Violets”, with repeated motifs of violets in the margins (Page 2).

Fig. 3: Detail of the decorated initials.

Given that these titles were not regarded for the intellectual rigour of their content, these extant portions of The Floral Gift thus give credence to how certain books are able to survive purely based on their formal qualities. The contents of this copy, for instance, were removed from the original binding and sold as individual leaves or keepsakes–perhaps for greater profit. These highly decorative fragments would then have been framed and displayed as works of art in their own right, with collectors locating artistic value in the intricacy of the decorated initials and the quality of the printing (Fig. 3). While this practice of “breaking” or dismembering books often compromises the integrity and evidentiary value of the original texts, this idea that individual leaves contain aesthetic value in themselves nevertheless highlights an alternative way in which books survive into posterity. Although the trend of giving a book as a gift was originally focused on the lasting quality of the object, the process of systematic destruction exemplified by these remaining fragments of The Floral Gift ultimately points to other viable ways in which a book may last forever.

Prepared by Ina

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The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The Mystery of Edwin Drood was an unfinished series written by Charles Dickens during the Victorian period, right before his death. Dickens only finished half of the story before his death and left no plans for the later parts. This is why the exhibited final volume has a printed sticker indicating a price increase (compare Fig. 1 and exhibited book): the publishers decided to capitalise on his death and thus sold it at a much higher price. 

Fig. 1: Cover page of Volume II held by NTU, with vol no. and date of publication

However, in light of the theme of this section of the exhibition, it is the books’ printed inserts that interest us, and there are two types: advertisements and illustrations. The former in particular are very prevalent, because they were the publisher’s main source of profit: advertisements were used to defray the costs of printing and distributing the books. This is especially true for this series since all the books had elaborate illustrations. At the time, printing illustrations was incredibly expensive, mainly because they required so much ink to print that better-quality, more expensive paper was needed – and paper already made up at least half of printing costs at the time [1]. So, to further maximise profit, advertisements were printed very cheaply. This can be seen from the cheap paper (see Fig. 2.1) and how some pages are not properly centred (see Fig. 2.2). 

Fig. 2.1: Blatant ghosting, in which text shows through from one side to the other, shows very thin, cheap paper quality

Fig. 2.2: printing not properly centred on page (borders do not match up with page edges)

However, some consideration did seem to go into the advertisements’ placement. As mentioned in the exhibition summary, volume I’s advertisement section was at the book’s center (see Fig. 3.1). Since it was inserted right in the middle of the scene, this would have severely disrupted reading flow. Presumably this irritated readers, because throughout the rest of the series the advertisements shifted to the books’ beginnings, before the story (see Fig. 3.2). From volume III onwards, an additional advertisement section was also added to the back (see Fig. 3.3), probably because the series’ – or Dickens’ – popularity meant that more advertisements were sent in to the publishers. Either way, from this shift in advertisement placement, it can be inferred that publishers had to make changes to the way they arranged their books’ contents to enhance reading experience, and so cater to their reader purchasers. 

Fig. 3.1: Volume I’s ad section in middle of book

Fig. 3.2: Volume II’s ad section starting right after cover page

Fig. 3.3: Volume III’s ad section at back of book

The change in illustration placement, however, seems to cater to a different issue. While volumes I and II have illustrations inserted at the appropriate scene (see Figs. 4.1, 4.2), the rest have their illustrations directly after the beginning advertisements (see Fig. 4.3). Considering the former placement would enhance reader experience, why the change? 

Fig. 4.1: line corresponding to illustration

Fig. 4.2: illustration on next page

Fig. 4.3: both illustrations placed after beginning ad section in volume III

This change was probably to cut down on time. Finding the right scene to insert the illustrations for all copies of each volume would have been incredibly time-consuming – and thereby reduce the number of copies the publisher could sell. Thus, it seems quite likely that this change in illustration placement was meant to serve the publisher’s interests more than readers’, since it does diminish the latter’s possible reading experience.

In conclusion, this series is thus important for this exhibition theme: through changing and standardising the placement of advertisement and illustration inserts, the former for readers’ benefits and the latter for the publisher’s benefits, one is able to see that the object of the book is in fact very malleable, in ways that may or may not detract from the author’s original message by changing its reading experience.

References

[1] Eliot, Simon. “Half the cost of a book”. Oxford University Press blog (OUPblog), 30 Jan. 2014, par. 1, blog.oup.com/2014/01/paper-cost-printed-book-publishing/. Accessed 20 Mar. 2021.

 

Prepared by Ng Shao Yi

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Indago Monocerotis (1658)

Marks of Ownership in Early Printed Books

            Examining a book’s history of ownership is essential in understanding the various ways it was used, along with tracking individual and institutional history. This edition of Indago Monocerotis was printed in 1658 by Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. This particular copy is fascinating because it has been acquired by both public and personal collections with diverse locations and purposes. It contains four main types of ownership inscriptions: handwritten inscriptions, bookplates, ink stamps, and archival labels.

Fig. 1 Overview of this copy’s ownership history, inferred from its ownership inscriptions

Handwritten Inscriptions

 

Fig. 2.1 Handwritten inscription: “Ecclesiae Lichtenstadis 16,” crossed out

Fig 2.2 Handwritten inscription: “Bibliotheca Slacoverdensis Scholarum Piarum”

Handwritten inscriptions were a simple and early way of indicating book ownership. After its publication, this copy remained within the Czech Republic for the first part of its history. An inscription (Fig 2.1) records that the books belonged to Lichtenstadt Church, in Hroznětín. The number 16 may have been part of the church’s cataloguing system.

Interestingly, the ink striking out “Ecclesiae Lichtenstadis” seems to be the same ink as at the foot of the title page (Fig 2.2). This implies the book’s direct transfer to Bibliotheca Slacoverdensis Scholarum Piarum, a scholarly Piarist library in nearby Ostrov. The transfer may suggest the book’s development from being owned as a religious text to being used in a more academic context, which later ownership also reflects.

Bookplates

Fig 3.1 (Left): Bookplate of Edward Oates

Fig 3.2 (Right): Bookplate of William Edward Oates

            Bookplates, or Ex Libris (“From the Library of”), are labels collectors use to indicate ownership, often with a motif representing the owner. The Oates family seem to have obtained this book in the 19th century and passed it to successive generations, a common pattern in private book ownership. Many of the Oates family were naturalists and likely acquired it out of personal interest. As father and son, Edward and William Edward Oates had similar coats of arms (Fig 3.1 and Fig 3.2) that used variations of their family motto.[1] Notably, William Oates died in 1896; his bookplate’s “1897” indicates its posthumous insertion, highlighting the private importance of recording ownership.

Fig 3.3: Bookplate of Robert Washington Oates

            Robert Washington Oates was William Oates’ nephew. An avid book collector, he established the Oates private library. His bookplate is visually similar to his ancestors’ (Fig 3.3), with the armoured hand holding a dagger resembling those on top of the other coats of arms.

Book stamps

Fig 4.1 Ink stamp of Bibliotheca Oatesiana

Fig 4.2 Ink stamp of Newton Library, University of Cambridge

Fig 4.3 Bibliotheca Oatesiana stamp on a page of the book

            Institutions and private collectors also used stamps to indicate ownership. This copy of Indago Monocerotis contains the stamps of the Oates family library (Fig 4.1) and the Newton Library at the University of Cambridge (Fig 4.2). The Oates family library also stamped a page within the book (Fig 4.3), deterring the reader from removing the evidence of ownership at risk of sacrificing textual content.

            As its stamp indicates (Fig 4.2), Newton Library primarily held books meant for the Zoological Department’s reference. Like the Oates family, the library may have also obtained it for naturalists’ interest, but the book’s purpose in the context of academic research differs from its more informal presence in the Oates collection.

Labels

Fig. 5 Label describing the movement of this copy between institutions

            A label (Fig. 5) pasted on a front flyleaf describes the book’s movement to the Gilbert White Memorial Library established by Robert Oates.[2] The label emphasises a key difference between public and private book ownership. In becoming part of an archival collection, information must be preserved for the public’s understanding and cataloguing purposes, as opposed to being kept as part of a personal collection.

            Spanning locations and purposes, this copy of Indago Monocerotis exemplifies how ownership inscriptions shed light on the various uses of a book in different contexts. Patterns of book ownership may also help us trace the larger movement of products and ideas throughout history.

References

[1] Burke, Bernard. The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, Comprising A Registry of Armorial Bearings from the Earliest to the Present Time, London, Harrison, 1884.

[2] “The Oates Collections.” Gilbert White’s House and Gardens, accessed on 22 March 2021. http://www.gilbertwhiteshouse.org.uk/the-oates-collections/.

 

Prepared by Angelyn Tan Liu Ying

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Meditationes, Printed Leaf with Handwritten and Scraped Corrections (c.1480-82)

It was possible to visually match this leaf with a copy of Meditationes held by Bayerische Staatsbibliothek thanks to the digital archives [1, 2, 3] and the Internet.

This leaf comes from a book that contains prayers written by St. Augustine and St. Bernard, printed in Milan in the early 1480s by Beninus and Johannes Antonius de Honate. It was edited by Masellus Beneventanus. It is printed in Latin even though texts would have largely been in the vernacular Italian in the late fifteenth century [4]. This hints that the reader or owner of this book was either someone who worked with the bureaucracy or clergy, or was just highly educated. 

This text reflects a period of intersection between manuscript and print, as the conventions of manuscript are followed closely by early printers [5]. In red ink (refer to Fig. 1) the norm of marking section headers with the pilcrow (¶) and underline persists. New paragraphs begin with an initial more than one line high. At the start of sentences, initials are also emphasised with a stroke of red ink. 

Fig. 1 Photo of leaf held by NTU

An interesting point to note here is that the red markings are added by hand onto the printed page. [6] This is a process called rubrication, which provides a sense of completion to the print. The process of printing plans for the rubrication, as seen in the space left for the rubricator to fill the initial in and the printed letter that is meant to be there. The differences may be observed by comparing this leaf to another copy without rubrication (refer to Fig 2.1 and 2.2). It is possible that the reader/owner would take the printed book to a rubricator separate from the publisher.

Fig 2.1 Photo of copy held by NTU 

Fig 2.2 Screenshot of copy held by Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

There are also tiny markings in brown. These are corrections and edits made by the reader/owner, which include adding letters and paragraph markings. It is possible that the reader/owner was either familiar with the prayers already, had another copy to cross reference, or was just highly educated. The most fascinating of these corrections are the ones where the original printed letter has been scraped away and written over (refer to Fig 3.1 and 3.2).

Fig. 3 Photo of copy held by NTU

Fig. 3.2 Screenshot of copy held by Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

            In this single leaf alone, the reader/owner made four scraped corrections. Three of them change letters from capital to lowercase, while one seems to be a grammatical error. The method of scraping out mistakes and writing over them is one that originates from scribes writing on parchment. [7, 8] Using this method on paper is intriguing because while parchment is thick, paper is relatively not. The scraping reflects the influence of manuscript writing on print, as well as the knowledge of the reader/owner regarding the scribal writing process.

Fig. 4 Medieval scribe holding quill in one hand and knife in the other, from British Library

            Given that the leaf was printed in 1480-1482, the paper and ink have stood the test of time very well. The preservation and study of written and printed text gives us the opportunity to learn more about how people lived centuries before today.

References

[1] The Morgan Library and Museum

[2] British Library, Incunabula Short Title Catalogue

[3] Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München

[4] Briggs, Charles F. “Literacy, Reading, and Writing in the Medieval West.” Journal of Medieval History, vol. 26, no. 4, Elsevier Ltd, 2000, pp. 397–420, doi:10.1016/S0304-4181(00)00014-2.

[5] Nyström, Eva. “Codicological Crossover: The Merging of Manuscript and Print.” Studia Neophilologica, vol. 86, no. 1, Routledge, 2014, p. 114, doi:10.1080/00393274.2013.856534.

[6] Smith, Margaret M. “Red as a Textual Element During the Transition from Manuscript to Print.” Essays and Studies (London. 1950), vol. 2010, Boydell & Brewer Inc, 2010, p. 188.

[7] Doyle, Kathleen. Lovett, Patricia. “How to make a medieval manuscript.” British Library, Medieval England and France 700-1200.  

[8] Rudy, Kathryn M. “The Editing of Illuminated Manuscripts by Medieval Scribes”. 2017

 

Prepared by Jasmine Alicia Wangko

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Manuscript Breviary with Scraped Corrections

The leaf upon which this manuscript breviary was written and subsequently edited is made from animal skin. This is evidenced by the scattering of darker brown dots on the sides of the parchment, left by the hair follicles of the animal on the right side of the leaf, and a dark spot on the lower left corner of the leaf in Fig 1, that indicates the presence of animal fat, resulting from improper removal of fat from the skin and insufficient stretching of the animal skin during the parchment making process.

Fig. 1 Photo of Breviary Leaf 

The edits visible on the parchment are conventional for a manuscript. They include scraped out sections, faintly visible in Fig 2 and 3, replaced by a different set of information as well as additional text as seen in Fig 4. These scraped out sections are believed to have been details dealing with the conception of the Virgin which became a subject of debate in the 15th century, situating the edits made to the manuscript to this time period and the creation of the original manuscript itself to be prior to the conclusion of the debate in 1476. The use of parchment was more common in Europe from the 6th to 14th century, after which paper began to replace it as the common medium. The breviary leaf being made of parchment reinforces this estimation of its creation and editing in the 15th century.

Fig. 2 Scraped corrections first section

Fig. 3 Scraped corrections second section

Fig. 4 Extra information added in after completion of original manuscript

The slight inconsistency in the handwriting seen between Fig 2 and 4, suggests that these edits were possibly made by two separate individuals at two separate times. However, as a breviary leaf, it contains passages used during religious services in church. This suggests the leaf was owned by a church and implies that edits to the manuscript, while possibly being made by two different individuals, were likely made according to a single organisational direction in the church rather than being personalised edits that tailor the use of the leaf to a specific individual.

The edits illustrate how perceptions and teachings of religion have undergone change to convey what was believed to be the correct religious doctrine and provide the congregation with the right teachings. It highlights the fluidity of the book, which is reinforced by the possibility of the text undergoing multiple edits at different times. Additionally, as a religious text that was likely the property of the church and not available for personal use, it highlights the power those in possession of the text had over others as they could control the information disseminated to the masses and alter it in line with their beliefs to spread their agendas.

Prepared by Mavis Chiong