Exhibition of medieval manuscripts from the Schoyen Collection

Medieval manuscripts from the outstanding private collection of Martin Schoyen were displayed, some for the first time, in the Senate House Library to accompany the Sixteenth Colloquium of the Comité International de Paléographie Latine in London on 2-5 September.

The Schøyen Collection comprises most types of manuscripts from the whole world spanning over 5000 years. It is the largest private manuscript collection formed in the 20th century, containing over 700 manuscripts. Martin Schoyen was present to talk about the manuscripts displayed and his collection and he kindly made available a catalogue of the items.

The colloquium was hosted by the Institute of English Studies, University of London.

New journal ShelfLife

The first issue of the new journal ShelfLife: The Bulletin of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, 2006 v.1, no.1, is finally out and available in the Palaeography Room at fol. CC25.9 [ShelfLife].

The journal is a new publication in the field of manuscript studies and "a meeting place for scholars, collectors & connoisseurs of manuscripts, books & the written word" with an interdisciplinary focus. It is edited by Mildred Budny and Asa Simon Mittman. The presentation of the journal is in keeping with the "style manifesto" of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence. The first issue pleases the reader with its large format, beautiful illustrations, and attention to the relationship between text and image on the page.

More information about the journal and the Research Group based in Princeton, USA, can be found on their website.

Manuscript Studies headings on Intute

There are over 400 descriptions of Manuscript Studies resources currently live in the Intute Arts & Humanities database, and more are being added constantly. These descriptions can be browsed using a topical listing broadly based on the classification scheme used in the Palaeography Room.

Please send any comments and suggestions about these headings to the editor of this blog or directly to Intute. You can also suggest new resources not already on Intute by using their 'Suggest a site' form.

Note: The Intute Arts & Humanities database is the largest repository of links and detailed descriptions of websites of scholarly interest in the UK, freely available for seaching on the web.

The Manuscripts of Bede

The AMARC Summer meeting 2008 in the Prior's Hall at Durham Cathedral last week offered participants a great opportunity to listen to a series of papers bringing new Bede scholarship and projects to light. Among them:

Jo Story, ‘Bede and the transmission of papal letters to early Anglo-Saxon England’

Julian Harrison, ‘Reclassifying the manuscripts of the Historia ecclesiastica: the evidence of the annalistic recapitulatio’

Joshua Westgard, ‘An electronic hand-list of Bede manuscripts’

Richard Gameson, ‘Indexing Bede in the late Middle Ages’

Mark Faulkner, ‘Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica in Anglo-Norman England’

Alan Coates, ‘The Early Printed Editions of Bede’

The meeting was accompanied by a small display of Bede’s manuscripts from the Cathedral's holdings. Notes on the material exhibitied were helpfully compiled by Professor Richard Gameson and bound in a pamphlet entitled Bede in Durham Cathedral Library. The pamphlet can be consulted in the Palaeography Room, classmark CC25.61 (P.C.2.) (17).

Public domain image from:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nuremberg_Chronicle_Venerable_Bede.jpg

New books recently arrived in the library

The end of the 2007-08 academic year has come to an end, with many new additions to the Manuscript Studies and Palaeography Collection. View all new titles.