Fig. 4 (left) Eerste verdieping van het bibliotheekgebouw, Rapenburg. Plattegrond i.v.m. de verbouwing van 1915. Rechtsboven de kerk; linksmidden: werkzaal en depot voor de westerse handschriften. Bibliotheekarchief, BA1 S 367.
Fig. 5 (right) Instructie voor de bibliothecaris en de custos, in 1741 opgesteld door het college van curatoren. Archief van Curatoren, UBL, AC1 157.
Fig. 14
Fotoportret van hoogleraar rechtsgeschiedenis
Willem Matthias d’Ablaing (1851-1889).
UBL, PK-PT-319.
Fig. 15
Fragment van de Limburgse Aiol
Dertiende eeuw, eerste kwart. De verzen van een ridderroman zijn doorlopend genoteerd als proza, gescheiden door een punt: Hellewijn dů hi versach · dat Gwineot dar nieder / lach · stant up ai lecker seit hi drade · dat di got / ungeval berade · … (‘Toen Hellewijn zag dat Gwineot daar op de grond lag, zei hij snel: “Sta op, smeerlap. Dat God je ongeluk mag bezorgen! …’). BPL 1049.
16 Sinte Franciscus leven BPL 83. Katern ·ii· (hier fol. 1-8) beschreven als BPL 103 in de catalogus van 1716 bleek afgedwaald uit deze codex, die begon met katern ·iii·, en is in 1902 terug ingevoegd. Katern ·i· ontbreekt nog.
Fig.
IWORDS AND LANGUAGES
n essence, texts are collections of words. In the medieval period, when books were scarce and reading was a skill few possessed, words – the fundamental building blocks of a text – attracted keen attention from scholars. The primary reason for this interest is perhaps obvious: to read, particularly in a foreign tongue, one had to understand the vocabulary of the language. Special compilations were produced to introduce and teach such vocabularies. A good example is a ninth-century copy, almost square in format, of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana (no. 25, VGQ 7), a bilingual Latin-Greek textbook.
But textbooks like the Hermeneumata and other glossary manuscripts were more than simply points of access to vocabulary lists. Rather, they captured the infinite possibilities of language – both mundane and exotic. Medieval compilers made collections of vocabulary lists – often arranged by letter, but sometimes by theme or author – which could be browsed for various purposes. Multiple glossaries could even be copied into a single manuscript (see no. 24, BPL 67 F), creating a collection of linguistic curiosities. In such lists, definitions of common words were found alongside more exceptional ones – preserved, even treasured, on account of their rarity.
Through such manuscripts, we glimpse how words could entertain and intrigue. Unusual etymologies inspired wordplay and riddles (see no. 26, VLQ 106, in its striking modern red binding). The skills of encoding, decoding, obscuring and interpreting were hallmarks of the intellectual elite of the ninth-century Carolingian schools. An almost-forgotten shorthand system of Roman antiquity, Tironian notes, was even revived (see no. 27, VLO 94, a tiny dictionary of this shorthand). Meanwhile, unusual alphabets were also a source of fascination, as an instance where Latin phrases were copied out in Greek characters suggests (see no. 24, BPL 67 F).
This interest in words was not, of course, confined to Latin and Greek, but also extended to vernacular languages, including German (nos 25 and 28; VGQ 7 and BPL 130, respectively) and Old English (no. 26, VLQ 106). Through close examination of manuscripts and their annotations, scholars can reconstruct aspects of medieval dialects and spelling conventions and can use such evidence to localise the producers of a text or its readers. It is no wonder that glossary manuscripts and other early texts in vernacular tongues have remained a subject of fascination for scholars, inspiring research from the early modern period to the present day (see nos 26 and 28; VLQ 106 and BPL 130, respectively).
TOLD TEXTS, NEW READERS
hroughout the medieval period, the classical past remained a source of inspiration and authority. Through their avid reception of classical texts, medieval scholars were ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’, as the twelfth-century writer John of Salisbury (c. 1120–1180) would memorably record. In twelfth-century Bologna, for example, scholars revived the study of Roman law with a passion. They compiled commentaries, which were then copied into manuscripts alongside the Roman legal texts, using an innovative page design (see no. 45, BPL 6 C).
Humanist scholars of the early Italian Renaissance prided themselves on rediscovering texts which had not been studied during the medieval period, trawling monastic libraries for Carolingian or even older copies of these works. To own a manuscript of one of these newly discovered works – such as Cicero’s Epistulae ad familiares (no. 47, VLF 49) – was to be in the vanguard of a scholarly revolution. Manuscripts copied by humanist scholars used a distinctive script and layout to signal their ‘modernity’, a style that attracted the interest of scholars far and wide. This is evident, for example, in a copy of the Letters of Pliny the Younger made by Rudolph Agricola, a pioneer of the Northern Renaissance (no. 48, VLQ 80).
Prior to the Renaissance, it was relatively unusual in medieval Western Europe to know classical Greek. Many of the works of Aristotle were translated into Latin in only the thirteenth century, and knowledge of Greek philosophy was often accessed indirectly, mediated through other sources. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 led to an influx of Greek manuscripts and Greek-speaking scholars to Western Europe, leading to the spread of texts which were commonplace in the Byzantine schoolroom (like the Greek Tragedies contained in no. 46, VGQ 6). Epictetus’ Enchiridion (no. 49, VGQ 54), an important handbook of Stoic philosophy, was translated from Greek into Latin in 1479.
The spread of Greek texts throughout Europe would also be aided by a new invention, the printing press. However, the most recent item in this collection, part of a French translation of Homer’s Iliad made c. 1540, was still copied by hand. It is a deluxe manuscript with a binding stamped all over with the letter F, indicating its intended reader, King François I of France. This high-quality manuscript shows that the art of copying books continued to be valued nearly a century after the invention of the printing press.
Old texts, new readers | manuscripts (back to front, left to right) VGQ 6 (no. 46), MAR 57 (no. 50) — VGQ 54 (no. 49), BPL 6 C (no. 45, bottom), VLQ 80 (no. 48, top) — VLF 49 (no. 47)
