Bound Fast With Letters: Medieval Writers, Readers, and Texts by Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse (review)

Richard and Mary Rouse open their introduction to their collection of articles, Bound Fast With Letters, with a quote from Isidore of Seville, who asserts that the “use of letters was devised to remember things: things are bound fast with letters lest they escape into oblivion” (1). The Rouses apply the quote to the wide variety of actors studied in the pages of their articles—writers religious and secular, patrons, and artisans from periods ranging from late antiquity to the early Renaissance and from regions as geographically removed from one another as North Africa and northern England, France, and Italy—and these individuals’ deliberate decisions to set things down in writing in an effort to preserve their stories and ideas. Yet the reader of this volume could just as easily apply Isidore’s words to the Rouses’ own work. Indeed, the collection of eighteen articles provided by the two medieval scholars “binds fast with letters” what otherwise might have lain dormant, lost to the scholarly world in archives and libraries, and from the minutiae uncovered draws broad-sweeping connections and conclusions. In the end, the two scholars have played a preeminent part alongside the wide variety of actors studied in the pages of these articles in utilizing “the power of writing to preserve and perpetuate forever those things that were [are] of importance” (1).

Many of these articles were previously published elsewhere, and it is necessary here to address what it is that this volume adds to the study of medieval codices, literature, and history if these articles, in and of themselves, are not new. Far from merely reprinting old material, the Rouses have created a cohesive volume in which the essays speak to each other on both thematic and methodological levels. The studies in this volume paint a vivid and comprehensive picture of medieval manuscript production, circulation of texts, and cultural movements by looking at specific actors and the objects they left behind. Their examination of individual and groups of codices reveal why and, perhaps more importantly, how these artifacts are “important witnesses to the wheres and wherefores of human change over time and space” (2). The authors have organized the articles into three sections, each one honing in on a type of actor who participated in manuscript production. The first section, entitled “Writing it Down: Practicalities and Imagery, 500–1220” treats the work of authors. The second, “Patrons and the Use of Books, 1250–1400” discusses the role of various patrons and book owners in the confection of codices. Lastly, “Commercial Book-Makers, French and Italian, 1290–1410” examines scribes, artists, and others involved directly in the physical production of manuscripts.

One concern evident in all these essays and, one could argue, throughout Richard and Mary Rouse’s long list of scholarship, is the attention afforded to each manuscript as important artifact both in terms of its own specificity and its relevance to broader contexts. This volume will be of particular interest to historians of medieval religious and academic traditions, offering up detailed accounts of specific actors and texts such as St. Cyprian (article 2), St. Antonius of Florence (article 17), Gratian’s Decretum (article 15), and Bernard of Pavia (article 5), and larger groups such as the North African Donatists (article 2) and the Waldensians (article 5). However, a literary scholar such as myself also found a wealth of knowledge “bound fast” by the Rouses’ own letters. The very first article in the volume discusses the figurative vocabulary associated with the use of wax tablets from late antiquity to well into the Middle Ages; article 12’s examination of Christine de Pizan’s use of the Chapelet des vertus in her Epistre Othea reveals the two historians’ mastery in the literary realm and provides further insight into the female author’s working methods.

Historians of the book will also be intrigued by the far...