The medieval book: illustrated from the Beinecke rare book and manuscript library (review)

Reviews 239 ambitious in every generation. H e could not be trusted by the royal master on w h o m his career depended. Schriber documents a figure caught in the grip of competing ambitions rather than competing ideals. Constant J. M e w s Department of History Monash University Shailor, Barbara A., The medieval book: illustrated from the Beinecke rare book and manuscript library, (Medieval Academy reprints for teaching, No. 28), Toronto/Buffalo/London, University of Toronto Press, 1991; cloth and paper; pp. 115; 8 colour plates, 106 monochromefigs,and a series of line drawings; R.R.P. CAN$65.00 (cloth), $24.95 (paper). It is a cunent trend, and a commendable one at that, among the repositories of medieval manuscripts to issue iUustrated volumes about their holdings. Three that come to mind are the National Library in Berlin, Kostbarkeiten der Deutschen Staatsbibliothek, ed. H. H. Teitge and Eva Maria Stelzer (Weisbaden, 1986); the Glasgow University Library's catalogue for its itinerant exhibition, The glory of the page (Glasgow and Toronto, 1987); and the omniscient Le Livre au moyen dge, ed. by a team of scholars of the Institut de recherche et d'histoire destextes,Paris under the direction of J. Glenisson (Paris, 1988). The present volume concerning the Yale University Beinecke library's collection does not quitefitinto the trend. It is a Medieval Academy of America reprint of a book first published to accompany an exhibition held 15 August-31 October, 1988. It surveys the origins of the physical supports for the written word from Egyptian papyrus rolls of the Christian era through to wax tablets, animal skins, and the early rag-paper incunabula of Western Europe. The theme of the exhibition and this publication are laid out precisely by the author: ' . . . the medieval book—its development construction, and function in the Middle Ages and Renaissance'. The colour plates and the black and whitefiguresare clearly printed and of good quatity and the Une drawings by Jane Greenfield add to Shailor's clear description of how manuscripts were put together. All the codices iUustrated are from the Beinecke collection. Shailor points out that in recent times considerable controversy has been generated over the primacy of the text in manuscripts, a contention challenged, she feels, by art historians and social historians alike. She weaves briefly into her descriptions material which will put champions of these two disciplines at ease. One may query the placement of the so-called Rothschild Canticles in the section reserved for 'Private devotionaltexts',the hodge-podge oftextsin that manuscript would bestfitinto the 'Commonplace books' portion. The author is modest in her achievement and does not overstate the worth of her study. She honestly points out that the work is intended for the non- 240 Reviews specialist. Established textual and art history scholars will not find anything new in the critical or analytical apparatus within the covers. It is difficult to agree with the pubUsher's hype that the work is '... an indispensable guide for scholars . . . ' . It is, however, an admirable record of a cross-section of the manuscripts held in the Beinecke and will be valuable to bibliophiles and certainly a teaching tool at the undergraduate level. Whilst Latin or technical terms are generally explained in her text, the lack of a glossary does, nonetheless, limit the volume's function as a teaching aid in this area. Peter Rolfe Monks Townsvdle Shepard, Jonathon and Simon Franklin, eds., Byzantine diplomacy (Papers from the Twenty-fourth spring symposium of Byzantine studies, Cambridge, March, 1990), Aldershot, Variorum, 1992; pp. xi, 332; R.R.P.? This is an important book on several counts. First and not least it is the first volume in a new monograph series published by the Society for the promotion of Byzantine Studies. The SPBS, founded in 1983 as an umbrella organization for the sundry activities in Byzantine studies in the British Isles, has already taken under its wing the Bulletin of British Byzantine Studies (BBBS) whose annual, regular, and increasingly more complete lists of recent publications is now more than ever acting as a substitute for the authoritative but much delayed bibliographical listings of Byzantinische Zeitschrift. For nearer thirty than twenty years, at first...