In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Reliures médiévales des bibliothèques de France, IV: Bibliothèque municipale de Reims
  • Mirjam Foot (bio)
Reliures médiévales des bibliothèques de France, IV: Bibliothèque municipale de Reims. By Jean-Louis Alexandre, Geneviève Grand, and Guy Lanoë. Turnhout: Brepols. 2009. 513 pp. 8 colour plates; 162 pp. of black-and-white illustrations. €80. ISBN 978 2 503 51746 9.

The admirable project to describe all pre-c. 1550 bindings in French libraries, the brain child of Jean Vézin, taken on by the Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes, has reached its fourth volume. In contrast to the more homogeneous collections of the libraries of Autun, Vendôme, and Orléans, that of the municipal library of Reims combines manuscripts from the cathedral with those from one Augustinian and three Benedictine abbeys, each with its own history. In a lengthy introduction, Guy Lanoë relates how the individual libraries developed, flourished, and declined. [End Page 353]

The most important of the ecclesiastical libraries that together form the core of the municipal library was that of the cathedral. Its greatest treasures date from the Carolingian period and from the years either side of 1400. Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims (845-82) and Abbot of St Remi, founded the cathedral library and more than a hundred manuscripts written in Reims during his reign have survived. The library continued to grow and among its important donors was Guy de Roye (d. 1409), whose arms and/or inscriptions can be found on or in many of the volumes. Canon Gilles d'Aspremont (1384-1414) made an inventory when the library was rehoused in 1412. Several more inventories of the second half of the fifteenth century, two of them mentioning provenance and binding, show how the library continued to grow. A late-seventeenth-century catalogue notes repairs, reordering and rebinding. Of the 511 bindings from this collection, the majority date from the fifteenth century, followed by those from the sixteenth.

As well as the holdings of the capitular library, those of several abbeys are still present at Reims. By the second half of the eighth century a monastic community was established at the abbey of St Remi. The abbey was enclosed in the tenth century and intense activity took place during the following two centuries. The rule of St Benedict was adopted and the abbey reached its apogee under a number of remark able twelfth-century abbots. The thirteenth century saw the beginning of a decline, further hastened by the Hundred Years War. Eventually, during the sixteenth century, the abbey was united with the archbishopric of Reims and during the second decade of the following century it was reformed by the Congregation of St Maur, restoring the strict observance of the monastic rule and reinstating the practice of study. The manuscripts were put in order and given shelfmarks; those in need were rebacked in brown sheep, while their boards and covering materials were preserved. The books that needed rebinding were sewn according to their earlier herringbone pattern, the spine panels lined with parchment, and the original wooden boards reused. Little is known about the earlier library. There was a scriptorium in Carolingian times and there are traces of renewed scribal activity at the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth. A number of lists and catalogues exist from the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth centuries. A fire early in 1774 destroyed most of the library.

The abbey of St Denis was an Augustinian community, reformed in 1067. By the eighteenth century the library had lost most of its important books. Fifty-eight-manuscripts remain in Reims. Three lists or catalogues still exist, dating from the late sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Although the surviving manuscripts were written during the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, the majority of their bindings date from the fifteenth century, showing here as well as elsewhere the lack of congruence between the dates of the manuscripts and those of their bindings due to extensive rebinding and restoration during the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. More were rebound during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, several by the mid...

pdf

Share