The artist who painted the initials in this #Renaissance Italian manuscript (@subugoe Cod. MS philol. 116) painted this A upside down so that it now looks like a V. An A was added in the margin as a correction. Did the artist work upside-down, and if so, why?
Pre-modern books are great records of human error and therefore of historic working practices.
This is the handwriting of renowned historian Theodor Mommsen @subugoe. I‘m a trained palaeographer and I can’t read it - not without spending a long time working out the individual letters. But native German speakers who have seen this type of writing before have much less trouble. Cursive #palaeography is all about exposure! @histodons@medievodons@historikerinnen
A project to transcribe the accounting books of Aldersbach Abbey (Bavaria) from the 15/16 c seeks a Latin palaeographer who can accurately read and transcribe these entries. Work can be done remotely.
Looking at #Arabic#manuscripts with my students today. This is a stunning frontispiece from @subugoe Cod MS arab. 190, containing the Kitāb al-wāfīya fi šarḥ al-kāfīya from 1478, collated with the author’s own copy. @historikerinnen@medievodons@histodons#palaeography
Two upcoming online lectures next Tuesday, 14 May (alas, their times overlap).
Here's the first, sponsored by the Celtic Studies Association of North America: Sarah Waidler (NYU) will speak on ‘Arthur, Authority and the Saints Revisited’ at 12 noon EDT (= 5 pm BST).
Update from the eManuSkript project: we've mocked up a website with a holistic interface for all the apps; we're starting tagging of the 200GB supplementary training set for our neural network; the students are developing script & #manuscript training sets for online tutorials; and much, much more. I have such a brilliant team!
These are digital #microscope photos of a camel from a 15th-century Persian manuscript in the @subugoe (Cod. MS pers. 14). The purple image was taken with ultraviolet light and the grey picture with infrared. Because infrared goes right through most pigments, it reveals the preliminary sketch of the camel underneath the pigment (which you see in the UV photo). Really interesting for the history of art!
Please share the information about the below as widely as you can - this is a #palaeography course for the general public, which is super rare!
"Join Dr Manuel Muñoz in a one-day overview of Iberian late-medieval books at the London International Palaeography School. We will explore the evolution of book scripts between the 13th and the 15th centuries, and we will discover what makes late-medieval Iberian #manuscripts unique."
Exciting news! @erc has awarded an #ERCAdG worth €2.5m to Insular #Manuscripts in the Age of Charlemagne. Our team includes @litteracarolina.mastodon.online & partners in libraries & universities across Europe, including the ERC Beasts2Craft project, Prof. Daniel Bradley, Dr. Charlotte Denoël at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Dr. Lieve Watteeuw, @BodleianLibraries, and the British Library.
Very cool that the oldest known Polish prose text is actually assembled from binding fragments. It really highlights the importance of #fragmentology, and the possibility of more treasures hidden inside early modern book bindings.
Lists like these really drive it home how many #medieval#manuscripts have been lost over time - nearly 1,500 manuscript were destroyed at the National Library of Warsaw alone in WW2.
I may soon be collaborating with Wiki #Education to help my students create articles on #palaeography. Does anyone have any advice about how best to do this? (I will get lots of support but would be interested to hear individual opinions too!).