Western Illuminated Manuscripts: A Catalogue of the Collection in Cambridge University Library by Paul Binski and Patrick Zutshi (review)

This new catalogue of the decorated manuscripts in the Cambridge University Library pays tribute to a number of long-standing collaborations. In addition to the three scholars named on the title page, the project owes debts to the nineteenth-century scholars who produced the first modern catalogue (1856–67); to M. R. James, who left unpublished notes toward descriptions of most manuscripts in the “two-letter” and Additional classes (1925–30); and to H. L. Pink and Sir Roger Mynors, who later updated (but still did not publish) James’s notes. Binski and Zutshi also gratefully acknowledge the expertise of Jayne Ringrose, who published her Summary Catalogue of the Additional Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library Acquired before 1940 (2009) while this volume was in preparation. As is clear from the history of these descriptive efforts, a complete catalogue of the manuscripts in the Cambridge University Library has been a desideratum for a long time.

The aim of Western Illuminated Manuscripts is not to provide full codicological descriptions for the whole collection, but instead to focus upon manuscripts of greatest art-historical interest. In this, it is the Cambridge analogue to Otto Pächt and J. J. G. Alexander’s Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (1966–73). Like Pächt and Alexander, Binski and Zutshi focus on western medieval manuscripts containing “illumination, illustration, or notable decoration” (ix) including penwork and flourishing, and they arrange their volume first according to region of production (Britain, France, Flanders, northern Netherlands, Germany and Austria, Italy, and Spain), and then by approximate date. This geographic framework enables analysis and further contextualization, since the grouping of manuscripts sometimes suggests networks of production, yet it can become problematic when the place of production or the date is contested. Uncertainties about place are noted at the start of each regional section, and uncertainties about date within each entry. The catalogue does not include collections in the University Library on deposit from Cambridge colleges, nor manuscripts made after 1525.

The introduction provides a useful account of the Cambridge collection, including earlier owners and histories of acquisition. It also points out highlights from each region, including some that are already well known, and some that deserve to be better studied. From the Book of Cerne (no. 1) to a collection of anonymous sixteenth-century Spanish devotions (no. 472), each manuscript is carefully described and well illustrated, not only in black and white but also in two hundred impressive color plates. Each entry provides “summary” information about the structure and contents of the manuscript: material, foliation, layout, apparatus, incipit of the second folio, script, provenance, and binding. The manuscript’s decoration is discussed more extensively in a hierarchical progression from more to less substantial. Issues of special interest are pointed out in notes appended to each entry, which vary in length as necessary.

Readers of Studies in the Age of Chaucer, looking for ways of searching the collection for manuscripts of literary importance, will be interested in the catalogue’s indices. These include: an index of iconography (biblical and non-biblical); an index of scribes, artists, and binders; an index of authors and titles (in which Geoffrey Chaucer is somewhat strangely listed under “G”); an index of types of books and texts (about which more below); an index of provenance; an index of manuscripts; and a general index. The indices of scribes and artists and provenance are quite useful, but this reader found the index of types of books and texts oddly incomplete. To take the most obvious example, Chaucer’s works are not listed here under “poetry/verse,” even though, excluding a copy of the Treatise on the Astrolabe (no. 220), there are five verse manuscripts listed in the author index under his name (nos. 192, 202, 215, 235, 283). The three manuscripts given instead...