Information and Musings on C&I and Research in the SCA
That moment when you click on a link for a book, fully expecting to be taken to an Amazon or University Press page, but instead get a digitized copy with a download link.
So please enjoy Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages, by Melanie Holcomb in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The MOMA has a lot of books to download, actually. It was just nice to stumble on this one unexpectedly.
Catholic Church. Book of hours : use of Paris : manuscript, [ca. 1500].
Houghton Library, Harvard University
Shining Light on Medieval Illuminations: Pigments through the Ages – Medievalists.net
Identifying the materials used in medieval illuminated manuscripts gives us an insight into the techniques and skills of the scribes and illuminators, as well as the sometimes complex trade routes of the times.
Spectroscopy + Illuminated Manuscripts = Super Fun Science Time!
This is actually one of my FAVORITE Gothic manuscripts.
Also known as MS. Bold. 264 (parts 1 and 2), this manuscript of the Romance of Alexander is Flemish, originating in Tournai, Belgium.
This entire manuscript is available on the Bodelian Library’s “Luna” website. It has some pretty powerful zooming tools in its interface.
You will find fol. 059r here: [link]
The entirety of the manuscript is here: [link]
Enjoy!
No, but I can find some. I’m a librarian! 😀
(Sorry – I just did a binge-watch of all The Librarian movies to gear myself up for the TV show. Every time he announced, “I’m The Librarian,” I giggled.)
OKAY SO.
To start, how about the The Codex Assemanianus?
It was probably 10th century, but it’s still cool. You can read more about it here [link], and there are two pages of scans from it [link] [link]. Quite a few of these pages would be really easy to translate into SCA awards. I might do a few blanks myself for our current blank drive… Here are a couple of my favorites:
f. 157v
f. 10r
</p></But if we want to be firmly in the 11th Century, how about the Ostromir Gospels? These date to 1056-7. You can find more info at the National Library of Russia [link]. I’ve known scribes who have used this. That is, looking at it, I’m going “OH HEY. This is what so-and-so used!” Have a sample:
f. 2r
Lastly, there is the Arkhangelsk Gospel, also know as the Archangel Gospel, which dates to 1092, making it the fourth oldest Slavic manuscript we have. You can view the whole thing online at the Russia State Library [link].
Have fun browsing!
A while back, I asked the scareferencedesk for any illumination references with towers they knew of, and I promised to post them after they all got handed out. Well, it is definitely not in a timely manner, but they’ve all been handed out! I added some of the other designs I’ve done so it’s not so architecture heavy. I also added the Red Tower Rapier Champion scroll which was a group project. Mistress Adela did the calligraphy then curse because she left too much space (while the rest of us are laughing at how small she wrote), and then handed it to me and told me to draw a thing in the empty space. So, yay, weird little medieval person! I totally snagged the Knight Marshal on his way past the table and was like “SWORDS. HOW DOES THE HAND GUARD THINGY EVEN.” And luckily he spoke internet at 1am because he answered what I meant. The whole scroll totally was finished five minutes before evening Court, and we’re counting it as a major victory that it was dry. And then like a week later we had to ask if Wistric would send us pictures so we could keep track of the things we made. Veronica and I are still in the track our progress through photos of all the things we make stage.
Yay! So happy to see them! 😀 Also, Combat Scribing is awesome.
The British Library has a lot of digitized manuscripts online, which is awesome for SCA Scribes. Two of their best known treasures haven’t yet made the move from their old site, “Digitized Manuscripts”, to the new one, “Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts” – the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Luttrell Psalter. That’s because the Lindisfarne is a Cotton manuscript and the Luttrell is an Additional, and both of these collections haven’t yet made the transition yet.
The old site (DM) is actually really cool – when you click “View Bindings,” you get a viewer that allows you to page through the digitized manuscript and zoom in on elements. The new site (CIM) only gives you one high-res image and one slightly smaller one (in additional to thumbnails). They do have some detail scans, but it’s not the same (as you can imagine).
Lindisfarne Gospels (Cotton MS Nero D.IV)
Luttrell Psalter (Add MS 42130)
You can see the BL’s Access/Reuse/Copyright notes concerning images here: [Link]
Images used in this post are from Wikipedia.